{"id":14594,"date":"2017-05-07T16:01:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T02:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=14594"},"modified":"2017-05-12T16:37:18","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T02:37:18","slug":"reader-strepthroat-medical-prescriptions-for-foreign-patients-gauged-to-ineffectual-childrens-doses-regardless-of-patient-size-considerations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=14594","title":{"rendered":"Reader StrepThroat: Medical prescriptions for foreign patients gauged to ineffectual children’s doses, regardless of patient size considerations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. \u00a0We’ve dealt with cases of hospitals refusing to treat NJ patients before (see some cases here<\/a>). \u00a0Here’s something that’s never come up on Debito.org before: \u00a0How even when NJ receive treatment, medicines may be ineffectual due to low dosages. \u00a0Check this out. \u00a0I’m not a doctor (well, not one that can write prescriptions), so I hope members of the medical community can weigh in on this one. \u00a0Dr. Debito Arudou<\/p>\n

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From: StrepThroat<\/strong>
\n Subject: Fwd: Indirect discrimination in prescriptions?<\/strong>
\n Date: May 6, 2017<\/strong>
\n To: debito@debito.org<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Debito,<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t tend to get sick often but just my luck, I was hit with some evil form of strep throat just as Golden Week started. After hours of hunting down an open hospital, and then another hour or so to hunt down an open pharmacist, I had my prescription antibiotic cut down to 2\/3rds the prescription at the pharmacy. Apparently the doctor had taken my size into consideration when writing the prescription…but the pharmacists called him out on it exceeding the maximum daily dosage. I protested but was ultimately left with what the rest of the world considers a children’s dosage. After speaking with the pharmacist, doctor, and other pharmacists, what I found was the maximum dosage of certain medications is regulated by law and the maximum dosages for sales within Japan are determined by trials done exclusively on ethnic Japanese. I’m hardly a huge guy but at 75kg, I’m surely larger than the average Japanese. so this results in less than ideal dosages for nearly everything. For example, this time I was given:<\/em><\/p>\n

acetaminophen:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Extra Strength Tylenol is 1000mg every 6 hours.<\/strong>
\n Normal Tylenol is 650mg every 6 hours.<\/strong>
\n Childrens Tylenol is 500mg every 6 hours.<\/strong>
\n Japanese Calonol is 400mg every 6 hours.<\/strong><\/p>\n

clarithromycin:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overseas recommended dosage is 250-500mg twice a day.<\/strong>
\n Japanese dosage is 200mg twice a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huscode 741 combo pills<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overseas adult dosage is 3 pills, 3 times a day.<\/strong>
\n Overseas children’s dosage is 2 pills 3 times a day.<\/strong>
\n Japan dosage is 2 pills, 3 times a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically, strict regulation of dosage size, based on the average ethnic Japanese rather than a more reasonable system based on body weight or age like in other countries. The end result is ineffective, children’s dosing or less for those of us who don’t fit the garigari average Japanese body size standard.<\/em><\/p>\n

Probably not intentional racism but the narrow-minded mindset to use only locals for domestic Japanese consumptions means at the end of the day, it is likely to affect most NJ patients as well as any Japanese that are larger than the average Japanese. Every doc and pharmacist agreed the dosages were too small but gave the usual shogainai\/gamanshikadekinai answers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sincerely yours, StrepThroat<\/strong><\/p>\n

========================
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UPDATE: \u00a0Asahi: Joe Kurosu MD on ineffectually low doses of prescription medicine for NJ patients and bureaucratic intransigence, in the Asahi Shinbun https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=14616<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

StrepThroat: “I was hit with some evil form of strep throat just as Golden Week started. After hours of hunting down an open hospital, and then another hour or so to hunt down an open pharmacist, I had my prescription antibiotic cut down to 2\/3rds the prescription at the pharmacy. Apparently the doctor had taken my size into consideration when writing the prescription…but the pharmacists called him out on it exceeding the maximum daily dosage. I protested but was ultimately left with what the rest of the world considers a children’s dosage. After speaking with the pharmacist, doctor, and other pharmacists, what I found was the maximum dosage of certain medications is regulated by law and the maximum dosages for sales within Japan are determined by trials done exclusively on ethnic Japanese. […]<\/p>\n

“Basically, strict regulation of dosage size, based on the average ethnic Japanese rather than a more reasonable system based on body weight or age like in other countries. The end result is ineffective, children’s dosing or less for those of us who don’t fit the garigari average Japanese body size standard. Probably not intentional racism but the narrow-minded mindset to use only locals for domestic Japanese consumptions means at the end of the day, it is likely to affect most NJ patients as well as any Japanese that are larger than the average Japanese. Every doc and pharmacist agreed the dosages were too small but gave the usual shogainai\/gamanshikadekinai answers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,54,22,4,60,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-pinprick-protests","category-cultural-issue","category-japanese-government","category-nj-voices-ignored","category-problematic-foreign-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}