A magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit northern Japan on March 11, starting tsunamis that caused widespread devastation and damaged a nuclear power plant. 43 people died in hospitals because of failed medical care since the earthquake and tsunami.. Power outages and lack of heat and medical supplies are cited as reasons for the deaths. Japan's National Police Agency says 9,811 people are dead, 17, 541 are missing as of 9 p.m. Thursday night. The amount of radioactive iodine in Tokyo's tap water dropped considerably in a test Thursday morning, down to a level that would be considered safe for infants to drink, the city's government said.

The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, damaged after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, has given a fresh urgency, she says, to a medical problem of vast dimensions, highlighted reports that emerge daily on the spread of radiation. A pediatrician, Caldicott came from her native Australia to become an instructor on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where she specialized in the treatment of cystic fibrosis at the Children's Hospital Medical Center. She soon helped revive the moribund Physicians for Social Responsibility, a health organization dedicated to halting the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons and nuclear power.