Gaza sick, wounded could get medical care in Japan

TOKYO: The Japanese government is considering offering medical care in the world’s fourth-largest economy for sick and wounded residents of Gaza, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said.
Ishiba told a parliament session on Monday that his administration is working on a policy to provide support in Japan for “those who are ill or injured in Gaza.”
He said that educational opportunities could also be offered to people from Gaza, which is under a fragile ceasefire with Israel.
Ishiba was responding to a lawmaker who had asked whether a 2017 scheme to accept Syrian refugees as students could be used as a reference point to help Gaza residents.

“We are thinking about launching a similar program for Gaza, and the government will make efforts toward the realization of this plan,” Ishiba said.
The measures discussed in parliament are different to Japan’s main asylum policy, which has long been criticized for the low number of claims granted by the nation.
In 2023, Japan accepted 1,310 people seeking asylum — less than 10 percent of the 13,823 applicants.
Under a different framework, as of the end of last year, Japan had accepted a total of 82 people as students from Syria who were recognized as refugees by the UN refugee agency, a foreign ministry official in charge of aid programs said.