133.Current status of medical translation services in Thailand5. Summary4.Comparison between the two countries andconsideration of issuescorporations, and local governments are cooperating to respond with limited subsidies. For example, municipalities in Kanagawa Prefecture operatve the Medical Interpretation Dispatch System in cooperation with NPO corporations. At the request of 71 agreed medical institutions in the prefecture, medical translation volunteers are dispatched, and each case costs about 3,000 yen for two hours. The medical institution will pay for this, but some of them may be charged to the patient. Although such a system has been supported to a certain extent, a stable system has not yet been established, and many medical professionals feel the burden of practical work and diffi culty in dealing with it.In contrast to Japan, the importance of medical translation is well recognized in Thailand, and the country has made significant progress in developing its medical system. In fact, the public insurance system, known as the "30-baht healthcare system," introduced in 2002, now allows about 99.5 percent of people to access healthcare. Thailand has a vast network of medical facilities, including about 927 public hospitals, 363 private hospitals, and around 10,000 health centers and clinics across the country.Funding to support these healthcare systems is secured in a variety of ways, such as bank loans and through the investment of the company that starts the medical translation service itself. While this may not be well known in Japan, Thailand has many cases where former medical professionals and individuals with translation experience have leveraged their backgrounds to establish their own medical translation business. Unlike Japan, Thailand boasts a relatively large number of medical translators, supported by a more advanced medical infrastructure. Initially, I was concerned that having a large number of translators might lead to wide variation in skill and quality. However, my research revealed that such variation is much less pronounced in Thailand than in Japan. While there is no national qualification for medical translators in Thailand either, there are alternative mechanisms for ensuring quality. These include government-recognized certifications such as SEAPROTI, internationally recognized credentials like NAATI and ITT, and certifi cations issued by industry associations. Although it is "anyone can call themselves a translator" in form, it seems that in order to be certifi ed, specialized training and examinations are required, and considerable language skills and knowledge are required. In other words, a certifi ed medical translator is reliable by itself. And I found that when I worked as a certifi ed medical translator, medical translator is treated very well. While Thailand's average monthly income is 20,000 to 25,000 THB (approximately 70,000 to 90,000 yen), medical translators' salaries are estimated to be 2-4 times higher, which is a very high level of occupation in Thailand. Even in Bangkok, where living expenses are high, you can live with suffi cient fi nancial leeway. As a result, I felt that the quality of medical translation services is creating an environment in which foreigners can receive medical care with confi dence. That said, Thailand also has a problem. It is the existence of "regional disparities". Famous private and university hospitals are concentrated in big cities such as Bangkok, and advanced medical facilities such as the latest MRI, CT scan and ICU are also available. On the other hand, the outflow of medical personnel continues in rural and mountainous areas, and there are problems such as a shortage of doctors and a lack of specialized departments. The government has introduced a compulsory deployment system to encourage new medical graduates to work in rural areas. However, this policy has seen limited success. Medical clinics in rural areas are often outdated and poorly equipped, and local governments with constrained budgets struggle to improve healthcare workers' compensation or update medical facilities. Additionally, it remains difficult to attract highly specialized doctors and researchers to settle in these underserved areas. To bridge these gaps, we believe that further innovation in technology that enables access to advanced medical care in rural areas and expansion of telemedicine translation support systems will be required in the future.Comparing the medical translation services of Japan and Thailand, it is clear that although Thailand has problems such as regional disparities, the medical translation system for foreign patients seems to be relatively well-organized. In contrast, translation services have not yet developed suffi ciently in Japan. I think the main reason is that the importance of medical translators is not fully recognized in Japan. However, medical translators are certainly needed in the actual medical field. To improve Japan's medical translation services in the future, it would be valuable to learn from countries like Thailand that are focusing on medical translation. We believe that such an external approach could lead to the development of Japan's medical translation system.Thank you for reading it to the end. How was it? This time, we made a comparison focusing on Thai medical translation services,
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