Currently, Japan has been facing a serious aging issue, and it causes our financial deficit and generation gap in terms of income and pension. I used to work for Health and Wealth related field at a local government in Japan. As municipal health workers, I believe that it is time we moved forward to challenge with emerging
problems in the world, such as rapidly aging societies and wage disparities.
This time, I chose Malaysia to stay and study. Malaysia is one of the fastest growing countries in ASEAN, and the Muslim world. With “Vision 2020”, the Malaysian government is targeting to achieve a developed nation status by 2020. While in Malaysia, I hope to find tips for turning around our deteriorating financial condition.
Here are the more details on why I focus on this promising country.
Nowadays, medical tourism has become one of the major industries in Malaysia. In 2011, Malaysia accepted 650,000 patients from throughout the world, and which recorded the largest number in the world. Although we have
much cutting-edge technology in medical field, the Japanese government has not proactively introduced this policy so far.
On the contrary, most Japanese post-boomers are computer literate and have traveled abroad, that might make them more receptive to the idea of receiving care from a foreigner.
Generally speaking, the pace of Japan’s aging society is apparently in the lead by half a century in comparison to Malaysian’s. In Japan, we have a serious problem with the increase of social security expenditures today. I would like to find ways not only to gain revenues from health related sector such as medical tourism, but also to lighten our social cost by cooperating with young labour forces of Asia.
The Malaysian government introduced the long stay program for foreigners called “Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H)”, which gives favorable treatment in terms of visas, real estates and part time jobs. The program started in 2002 and has accepted 23,500 foreigners in total, including over 3,089 Japanese since then. According to a survey by the Japan Long Stay Foundation, Malaysia has been ranked at the top among all the nations, which is where Japanese seniors wish to experience long-stay （temporary
migration) the most eight years in a row. This trend is expected to continue and might have a great impact on the lifecycle and mindset of Japanese senior citizens.
Recently, there is a dynamic challenge thanks to EPA (Economic Partnership Agreement) in health-related field. The Japanese government plans to accept more foreign nurses and care givers from Indonesia, Philippine and Vietnam as a solution to the labour shortage, although it is not always going well due to our political pressures and their language barriers. It holds a great potential for the future in the light of our long closed labour market for foreigners. Currently, the proportion of foreign workers in Japan stands at
only 1% and it is the lowest level among advanced countries. Malaysia has much more experience in multi-ethnic workers including these three nations.
(Foreign workers in Malaysia accounted for approximately 8.3% of all workers in 2005.) Among all, Indonesia has the largest population of the ASEAN nations. It is similar to Malaysia in terms of ethnicity, culture, language, and religion. Also, I would like to learn about the Muslim community thorough my stay in Malaysia.
