SDF medical team leaves for quake-hit Haiti

NARITA, Japan, Jan. 21 Kyodo -
An emergency medical team of Japan's Self-Defense Forces left Narita airport
Thursday night for Haiti to help treat survivors of a deadly earthquake which
devastated the Caribbean nation last week.
The roughly 110-member team headed by Col. Makoto Shirakawa, consisting of
doctors and other personnel, left aboard an aircraft chartered from Japan
Airlines Corp.
The SDF team is expected to join a group of Japanese medical professionals,
including members of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, who have been
treating injured people at Leogane, a city close to the nation's capital
Port-au-Prince, since last Sunday.
Meanwhile, Sachiko Ozawa, a 35-year-old doctor and representative of a Japanese
nongovernmental organization named Friends of Haiti, is set to join in medical
relief activities as a temporary staff of a Japanese Red Cross Society team
departing on Sunday.
''It will be a worthwhile task, and I would like to complete the mission
responsibly,'' Ozawa said in the city of Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, where the
NGO is based.
==Kyodo