The is a cabinet

Cabinet (government)

A Cabinet is a body of high ranking government officials, typically representing the executive branch. It can also sometimes be referred to as the Council of Ministers, an Executive Council, or an Executive Committee.- Overview :...

 level ministry of the Japanese government. It is commonly known as Kōrō-shō in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. This ministry provides regulations on maximum residue limits for agricultural chemicals in foods, basic food and drug regulations, standards for foods, food additives, etc.

It was formed with the merger of the former Ministry of Health and Welfare or Kōsei-shō and the Ministry of Labour or Rōdō-shō .

The top of the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare

Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japan)

The , or , is the Cabinet of Japan member in charge of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. As of 2 September 2011, the current minister is Yoko Komiyama.-References:...

, a member of the Cabinet. The current minister is Yoko Komiyama

Yoko Komiyama

is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet . A native of Shibuya, Tokyo and graduate of Seijo University, she worked at the public broadcaster NHK from 1972 to 1998...

.

Organization

The ministry is quite large, with a complex organization. It contains:

• The Minister's Secretariat (including the Statistics and Information Department)
• The Health Policy Bureau
• The Health Service Bureau
• Pharmaceutical and Food Safety Bureau (including the Food Safety Department)
• The Labor Standards Bureau (including the Industrial Safety and Health Department, Workers Compensation Department, and Workers' Life Department)
• The Employment Security Bureau (including the Employment Measures for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities Department)
• The Human Resources Development Bureau
• The Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau
• The Social Welfare and War Victims' Relief Burea (including the Department of Health and Welfare for People with Disabilities)
• The Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly
• The Health Insurance Bureau
• The Pension Bureau
• The Director-General for Policy Planning and Evaluation
• Affiliated research institutions (6 research institutes, 218 national hospitals, 13 quarantine stations, and 3 Social Welfare Facilities)
• Councils (Social Security Council, Health Sciences Council, Labour Policy Council, Medical Ethics Council, Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council, Evaluation Committee for Independent Administrative institutions, Central Minimum Wages Council, Labour Insurance Appeal Committee, Central Social Insurance Medical Council, Examination Committee of Social Insurance, Examination Committee for Certification of Sickness and Disability, Examination Committee for Relief Assistances)
• Regional Bureaus (8 Regional Bureaus of Health and Welfare and 47 Prefectural Labour Bureaus)
• External Bureaus (Social Insurance Agency
  Social Insurance Agency
  The was an agency administered by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare. After a scandal involving millions of lost pension records, on January 1, 2010 it was abolished and replaced by the Japan Pension Service...
  
  , Central Labor Relations Commission)

Criticism

Published ministry employee and outspoken critic Moriyo Kimura states that the ministry's medical officers (ikei gikan) are "corrupt and self-serving." Kimura states that the officers, who number 250, have little experience and see no patients nor practice medicine after being hired by the ministry. Thus, says Kimura, Japan's public health policies lag behind other developed countries, by "decades."

See also

• European Medicines Agency
  European Medicines Agency
  The European Medicines Agency is a European agency for the evaluation of medicinal products. From 1995 to 2004, the European Medicines Agency was known as European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products.Roughly parallel to the U.S...
  
  
• International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use
• Drug development
  Drug development
  Drug development is a blanket term used to define the process of bringing a new drug to the market once a lead compound has been identified through the process of drug discovery...
  
  
• Clinical trial
  Clinical trial
  Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...
  
  
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

External links

• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
• Japan Guidances