A nursing care service facility of Kamimashiki Agricultural Cooperative (JA), called JA welfare center located at Yamato-cho in Kumamoto prefecture, has been continuously providing services for aged people living in JA’s area seven days a week since the powerful earthquake struck the Kumamoto prefecture on April 14.
At the JA welfare center, water supply was temporarily suspended and some of its facilities were also damaged by the continuous aftershocks. Even under such conditions, its seven-day service provision of two meals deliveries to 250 aged people per day as well as home-visit care has not been suspended.
Right after the earthquake hardly hit the area, Shioko Kita, general manager of the welfare center, told her staff members “We will have to tackle the hardest things. Let’s do our best.”
Some of the staff members had their houses destroyed by the quake. They are forced to commute to the welfare center from a shelter of the community center.
With a view to fulfilling a mission of supporting the rural community, the JA Kamimashiki continues to support the elderly, who have a higher risk of being most disadvantaged victims in the disaster-stricken area, by providing its nursing care services to them through its welfare center.