When Senator Keizo Takemi was appointed Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s Cabinet Reshuffle The appointment, made last September, was met with controversy not just from some in the medical community. Concerns from others.
The name Takemi holds special significance in Japanese medical circles: His father, Takemi Taro, was an outspoken doctor who often clashed with Health and Welfare Ministry bureaucrats as president of the Japan Medical Association, a lobbying group for private practitioners, from the 1950s to the early 1980s.
Over the past 11 months, Takemi Keizo has been blazing his own trail in his quest to make Japan’s healthcare policy more globalized and digitalized. He said his unique background as an international political scientist who briefly left politics in the late 2000s to serve as a public health fellow at Harvard University has “helped him greatly” as he works to reform Japan’s health care sector, including preparing for future pandemics.
