Japanese university partners with Bhutan to curb gastric cancer through testing and training

Oita University’s vice president Yoshio Yamaoka, an expert in preventive medicine, is overseeing a collaboration that equips Bhutan with rapid Helicobacter pylori test kits and expands endoscopy capacity. The rapid test, developed with pharmaceutical firm ADTEC, can detect the bacterium from stool samples in roughly ten minutes and is set for local production after approval by the Royal Centre for Disease Control. Japanese doctors spend two months each year in Thimphu training Bhutanese clinicians, and eight Bhutanese doctors have completed training in Japan, raising the national endoscopist count to 24 from a single practitioner in 2010.

The initiative, selected for a science-technology cooperation program jointly run by JICA and AMED, receives a budget of 500 million yen. Early detection is expected to lower gastric cancer mortality, which previously matched incidence rates in Bhutan.