Kanazawa: A team of medical professionals has been operating a triage center since Tuesday to save evacuees facing sometimes life-threatening health risks after a powerful earthquake that struck the central Japan prefecture of Ishikawa on New Year’s Day.

Elderly evacuees and others are arriving by helicopter at a staging care unit, which was set up at a parking lot near temporary evacuation centers in Kanazawa, the capital of Ishikawa.

At the SCU, a disaster medical assistance team, including two doctors, four nurses and four clerical staff members, has been working to select those who should be referred to hospitals, or sent to nursing care facilities or evacuation centers.

The SCU replaces some of the functions of hospitals that are tasked with accepting evacuees who have fallen ill to determine whether they need to be hospitalized but have been struggling to perform the job due to medical workers’ exhaustion.

“It’s like a triage function,” said Kenta Nishi, a clerical staff member of the team. Dozens of people are being transported to the SCU every day by helicopter from areas hit severely by the earthquake.

Many people taken into the SCU are aged 80 or over from elderly care facilities, said Daiki Wada, a doctor at Kansai Medical University Medical Center who took part in the SCU.

“Some people have become weak after living in evacuation centers for a long time because of a lack of decent sanitary conditions due to water supply disruptions and other reasons,” Wada said.

“It’s an action to reduce the number of seniors and people in need of care dying of indirect causes related to the earthquake,” Wada said, referring to the SCU.

JIJI Press