TOKYO -- A foreign woman seeking medical help in Japan after giving birth at home was rejected by five hospitals where officials said her Japanese wasn't good enough and they didn't have proper facilities, authorities said Thursday.
The woman, in her 20s, was finally admitted to one of the hospitals after begging to be treated over two hours, during which two of the hospitals rejected her twice, said Takaaki Uchida, an official in Tsu, 317 kilometers (198 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
All of the hospitals were equipped with maternity wards, but only two had intensive care units for newborn babies.
The incident happened in August 2006, but was reported in Japan on Thursday in the wake of the case of a 38-year-old woman who suffered a miscarriage last month after ten hospitals refused to admit her and her ambulance collided with another car.
The cases have raised concerns about shortcomings in emergency care for pregnant women, an growing worry as Japan grapples with declining birthrates - among the lowest in the world - and a burgeoning elderly population.
Uchida said the hospitals claimed the woman, whose name and nationality was withheld by officials, couldn't speak Japanese well enough for them to communicate with her, and that they didn't have emergency facilities to care for her newborn boy.
The woman had never consulted a doctor at a maternity clinic during her pregnancy, a fact that also made it difficult for her to find a hospital, Tsu City fire official Yoshinobu Sakurai said.
Sakurai also said the woman could not speak Japanese at all and her female companion to the hospital also spoke only broken Japanese.
Both the mother and the baby boy were healthy, according to Sakurai.
Following the miscarriage case, on Aug. 29 incident, the government has ordered local governments to review past cases of transporting pregnant women.
Last year, a pregnant woman in western Japan died after being refused admission by about 20 hospitals that said they were full.
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