Japanese Magsaysay winner brings sight to Vietnam’s poor

Japanese Magsaysay winner brings sight to Vietnam’s poor

Hattori Tadashi is one of the three people who won this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Award, also known as Asia’s Nobel Prize.

The 58-year-old Japanese ophthalmologist was recognized for his outstanding work in restoring the sight of more than 20,000 people in Vietnam for free, most of them blinded by cataracts due to a lack of access to health care.

Tadashi spoke slowly and softly in Japanese and English as we sat down for a Zoom interview in early September, while he was spending three weeks on vacation in Maui.

It all started when Tadashi was in his second year of high school when his father was battling stomach cancer.

Tadashi happened to pass by the hospital’s staff room and overheard the doctors and nurses talking about his dad. “That guy in Room 82 is going to die,” they said.

“They were talking about my father, I could never forget those words and so I decided that I would become a doctor to save as many patients as possible,” he told UCA News.

“Even after entering university, I was not among the best students. I was spending my time playing mahjong, basketball, and doing part-time jobs”

But his high school teacher told Hattori there was no way he could go to medical school given his very low grades. After four years of hard study to pass the entrance exam, he was finally admitted to Kyoto’s Prefectural University of Medicine.

“Even after entering university, I was not among the best students. I was spending my time playing mahjong, basketball, and doing part-time jobs,” Hattori recalled.

After the cram school where he worked went bankrupt, he even started his own cram school, “Hattori Juku.”

“I was a very popular teacher because my four years of experience in taking entrance exams was very useful in teaching the students how to actually pass the examinations,” he said.

Then one day an encounter changed his life.

“Professor Shigeru Kinoshita, who had just become a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, one day asked me ‘what do you think of ophthalmology?’ I told him the truth, ‘Actually, I am not good at using microscopes, so I don’t really like it.”

“Doctors who do not ask for help after a problem occurs always repeat the same mistakes”

However, one month after the meeting, Professor Kinoshita suddenly called him to his lodgings for a beer.

“After that night, I really felt Professor Kinoshita’s charm and decided that I wanted to devote my life to him, regardless of his department. That’s how wonderful he was,” Hattori recalled.

He was first sent to an affiliated hospital of Osaka University, where Professor Kinoshita’s mentor was the director. There, I met Dr Mano, who told me the importance of treating patients as if they were your parents!

“If you do so then you will immediately ask for support from your supervisors when something difficult happens while performing a surgery. Doctors who do not ask for help after a problem occurs always repeat the same mistakes because they think patients are just a springboard to improve their skills,” Dr. Mano said.

His successful adventure in Vietnam started with an ophthalmology conference held at the International Conference Hall in Kyoto.

“I was asked by a Vietnamese doctor at the conference to come to Vietnam to help patients there, as many people were going blind. At the time, I was living a comfortable life in Hamamatsu, where I could windsurf on my days off, a sport I have been doing since I was in my twenties,” Hattori explained.

“I felt so bad at the thought that these patients would remain blind”

But he started to think that maybe there were more important things in life, and he could save many people if only he went there.

“My family was very much against it, so at first they allowed me to stay only for three months in Vietnam. However, even after three months of treatment, there were still many patients who needed to be treated. I felt so bad at the thought that these patients would remain blind,” he remembers.

Working in Vietnam, which he began in April 2002, was like building a road where there was no road Hattori says. 

“Initially I was misunderstood for not being able to communicate well and for differences in culture and customs. The language was the most difficult but also the food, as I soon got sick from food poisoning that lasted four days. Still, I wanted to continue because it was rewarding,” he adds.

In Vietnam, he volunteered to perform surgeries on patients who could not afford to pay for treatment while working his way through his savings, living in a US$20-a-night room.

But then he ran out of money and in order to earn his living expenses began to spend two weeks every month in Japan, performing surgeries at various hospitals from Iwate in the north to Kagoshima in the south. The remaining two weeks were dedicated to Vietnam as a volunteer. 

But not everything was easy.

“There were times when I had trouble communicating. In order to solve the problem, I would write on paper or use body gestures. It was important for me to get used to Vietnamese culture and customs, rather than thinking, ‘If I were in Japan, I would do it this way.’ Thanks to this I was gradually accepted by the people around me,” he says.

Since it was a state hospital, it was common for staff to leave after working hours, and cancellations of surgeries were common. That irritated Hattori as the Japanese would never do this.

In order to perform surgeries, Hattori needed the cooperation of the operating room staff, but since he started working very early he had to do everything on his own.

He was doing all the work that nurses usually did.

“There were high expectations because I came from Japan. If anything went wrong, I was immediately the target of criticism”

“I was the one who connected the power supply for the surgical instruments and microscopes, prepared the surgical machinery, called the patients into the operating room, prepared anesthesia and sterilized surgical instruments all by myself,” Hattori recalled.

On one Christmas Day, he operated on 50 people. The operating room staff, who had been watching him with some skepticism up to that time, began to change their attitude.

“They felt like ‘oh Dr Hattori is really trying to save the people of Vietnam,’” he said.

He was often assigned the most problematic surgeries.

“There were high expectations because I came from Japan. If anything went wrong, I was immediately the target of criticism. Performing surgery under such circumstances was not easy, but I knew if I gave up, the patient would go blind. So I always gave my best,” Hattori recalled.

Hattori is trying to pass on the responsibility by training young doctors in Vietnam.

“I promised them that I would teach them all my skills, I would make sure to pass them on to the next generation. Especially, to those who feel real happiness by treating those less fortunate, even if that means earning less money yourself. Making patients happy is the best reward,” Hattori concluded.

He currently works at the VNIO (Vietnam National Institute of Ophthalmology), which was renamed the Japan International Eye Hospital in 2014.