Newsletter No. 575
News-Analysis
April 6, 2007

 

JAPANESE ACTIVITIES IN NIGER

Niger is a dry country south of Algeria and Libya, with a mostly-impoverished population of about 13 million. The Hausa people have a small majority, with substantial numbers of Djermas, Fulas, Tuaregs, and others. About 80% are Muslim.

Niger gained its independence from France on August 3, 1960, and for obvious reasons, its relationship with Japan has been rather tenuous over the years. But, though tenuous, Japan does have some slight connections with Niger.

Perhaps the most significant is that Niger plays a notable role in supplying Japan with uranium. Japan’s Overseas Uranium Resource Development has a 25% stake in Niger’s Akouta mine. This is one of a very few cases in which Japanese interests participate directly in mining uranium.

Also, JICA maintains an office in the capital of Niamey, and was until recently involved in an education program in the country.

Photo: JICA office in Niamey
Source: JICA

Diplomatic activity between Tokyo and Niamey is slight. No major Japanese politician has paid a visit to Niger, and, in the other direction, only then-Prime Minister Ibrahim Hassane Mayaki has come to Japan. On that occasion he was attending the second Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD II) in October 1998.

In FY2006, Tokyo offered grants totalling about US$14.9 million for food aid, assistance to farmers, and education.

What prompts this newsletter on Japan-Niger relations today is the following article that has appeared in the Daily Yoimuri.

JAPANESE DOCTOR BUILDS HOSPITAL IN NIGER
By Isaku Kodera

Windblown sand from the Sahara Desert covered the red-earth road. An oxcart passed by, raising a cloud of dust. This was Tessaoua, a city in Niger with a population of about 30,000. Standing on a thoroughfare scattered with shops selling mutton grilled on skewers is Tessaoua Pilot Center -- a hospital run by 65-year-old surgeon Yuzo Tanigaki. Set on a one-hectare plot of land, the hospital has 118 beds.

The doctor himself cuts a distinctive figure when he enters the operating room through the four sets of doors that keep out the sand. I watched as he donned his surgical gloves and grabbed an electric surgical knife. Applied to a patient's wound was a towel printed with the characters for Tango Chuo Shinkin Bank, a towel sent from his hometown of Kyoto Prefecture.

In 1982, Tanigaki was dispatched to a hospital in the Niger capital of Niamey as a medical expert under contract to the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Medical services at the hospital were free of charge, thanks to financial assistance from industrialized countries, something Tanigaki then thought was good for people in a poor, developing country. Later, however, he found that medical staff and patients who had grown accustomed to such financial assistance lacked the financial discipline required to make the most of limited resources. Medicines were prescribed freely, and quickly ran short as a consequence. Meanwhile, costly operating theater lights were often left on, causing the bulbs to burn out within a day. "Saving the people of Niger will take more than just surgical operations," Tanigaki came to believe.

Becoming a doctor was a dream he had held since his high school days. After studying medicine at the state-run Shinshu University, he sought to put his skills to work in developing countries. In 1979 he went to Niger for the first time as a doctor for a Japanese oil company. For 10 months he stayed in the desert. There he noticed how, even in temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius, local people kept their gentle smile -- something he says eased the hardship of living in such conditions. Three years later he returned to Niger, hoping he could one day be of help to the local people. After staying in the country for nearly ten years, he decided he would create a medical service that was independent of outside assistance in a provincial town that had no existing facilities. After pouring twenty million yen of his own money into the project, his Pilot Center was established in the spring of 1992. "We don't want a hospital here if it's not free of charge," local people would say when talking about Tanigaki's hospital behind his back. But later they started helping each other to cover treatment costs as they learned to appreciate the clinic.

As medical charges were kept to a minimum, the hospital was always in the red. A revenue shortfall totaling more than two million yen a year was made up with the salary Tanigaki received from JICA. But when his contract with JICA expired in 2001, many of the doctor's greatest fears began to come true. The hospital ran short of gauze and could not afford to buy bandages. Covered with unclean bandages, patients' wounds began to fester. Some days later, when he was at a loss over how to handle such problems, one of his nurses made a suggestion: "Why not leave the wounded parts exposed to the air, and get patients to regularly clean the wounds with water?" That would be far better than continuing to use filthy bandages, thought Tanigaki, whose mindset was changed by the suggestion. "I realized that I had been obsessed with doing things according to Japanese ways," he said.

He found many things that could be improved, or adapted to local needs. Those towels from the bank were found to be as good as gauze for absorbing blood, for example. Thick gloves sold for kitchen use in Japan were found to be durable, safe and reusable if sterilized. "The important thing is to allow self-sufficient medical care to take root in a way suited to local conditions. This is what I have come to realize after so many years of trial and error," Tanigaki said.