By Yuka Hayashi
TOKYO—The Japanese government will soon reach formal agreement to settle a massive class-action lawsuit involving people who contracted hepatitis B through childhood vaccination, expected to cost up to 3.2 trillion yen ($39 billion) in damages to compensate hundreds of thousands of victims.
The long-fought lawsuit, originally started in 1989, is a legacy of the time when needles and syringes were routinely reused to inoculate a number of children to save costs, a practice that persisted in Japan until 1988. Victims' groups estimate nearly half of the nation's 1.3 million hepatitis B patients and carriers had contracted the virus this way. The government's damages estimate is based on projections that a total of 33,000 patients and 400,000 carriers will seek compensation over the next 30 years.
The breakthrough in the case came when a national umbrella association of plaintiffs accepted on Saturday the terms of a settlement recommended by a district court in Hokkaido, one of the 10 locations where the case is being fought across the nation. The court recommended on Jan. 11 more generous payments to victims than those proposed by the government: 36 million yen ($440,000) for those with liver cancer or serious cases of cirrhosis. Furthermore, carriers with no symptoms will receive 500,000 yen, plus the costs of biannual checkups.
The plaintiffs had hoped their case would reach a successful settlement under the government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had earned fame while serving as health minister in the mid-1990s for holding public-health officials responsible in a case involving HIV-tainted blood products that made many Japanese sick. In a speech delivered at the opening of a parliament session Monday, Mr. Kan pledged "sincere effort" to respond to the latest court settlement. The government announced its intention to settle the case after the Jan. 11 court recommendation.
After formally announcing the settlement within the next several days, the government is expected to initiate parliamentary discussions for setting up a framework to pay for the settlement, a move that would put further strains on Japan's already debt-laden public finances. "We'd like to ask for understanding from everyone in the nation that this framework needs to be supported and shouldered by all of us," Ritsuo Hosokawa, minister of health, labor and welfare said in a recent press conference. A bond issuance or appropriation of funds from the social security pool are among the steps being considered, according to the Japanese media.
One significant feature of the settlement was the pledge to compensate "all victims," whether they can provide proof linking their cases to childhood inoculation, such as vaccination certificates dating back decades. This paves the way for all hepatitis B patients to receive compensation, except those known to have contracted through other channels such as blood transfusion.
"The settlement is more sympathetic to the plaintiffs than we had imagined," said Mieko Taniguchi, who leads the plaintiffs' association. "We are still dissatisfied with the compensation for the carriers. Given their feelings and sufferings, we really want to see more gets done for them." Ms. Taniguchi, 61, who has fought chronic hepatitis for over two decades, has a daughter and a grandson who are carriers of the virus. Plaintiffs say the carriers, though healthy, also suffer from significant damages, including the frequent discrimination they face as they seek employment and marriage partners.
Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com
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