その後、私は小児科専門医になり、医者十年目にあたる年に留学の目的で私はオーストラリアに渡航しました。オーストラリアで初めに働いた職場はMater Mothers' Hospitalという病院の新生児集中治療室（NICU）でした。未熟児で生まれた赤ちゃんや先天的な病気をもった赤ちゃんたちを診療する病棟です。その病院では、こうした病気と闘っている子どもたちへの貢献のために、寄付財団がありました。その財団の活動名は「Mater Little Miracles」といいます。財団の代表者たちは親切にも、この活動に関心を持った私にいろいろと教えてくれました。Japan Little Miracleの名称はここから引用させていただきました。
私たちも含めて人が成長すること、一つの命の小さな奇跡は、毎日の小さな奇跡が一つ一つ積み重なってなし得ているものではないでしょうか。この世界に生まれてきたことの喜びを思いっきり感じて生きてほしい。この小さな奇跡の命に感謝して、私たちの日本の子どもたちのために、ありあまるエネルギーを、あふれ出てくる思いを、私たちがアクションで思いっきり表現します。それがJapan Little Miracleの活動主旨です。
Japan Little Miracle is an activity platform aiming to contribute to health and welfare of children in Japan by us taking actions with sincere and profound love towards our children. Let me, hereby, briefly introduce my motivation to start this activity. Now, I have two children. The first baby was born when I was in the second last year of a medical school. The boy baby was an extremely-low-birth-weight premature baby. Notwithstanding the severe situation that we never knew whether he could survive, the boy baby has overcome a number of hurdles and grown up without major complications. After this experience, I became a doctor. The second baby, a girl, was born as a term baby though, at one month of age she developed a gastric disease called Pyloric Stenosis to which she needed a surgical operation. It was when I was a paediatric intern and she admitted to the paediatric ward where I was working. The operation was successful and she has grown up healthily afterwards. I am really blessed in having two precious children. From these experiences, I determined to choose a path to become a paediatrician and dedicate myself to sick children.
Then I have become a paediatric specialist and in my 10th year as a doctor, I crossed the sea to Australia for my overseas study. My first work place in Australia was neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Mater Mothers’ Hospital. NICU is a ward where premature or sick babies are cared. In the hospital, there is a foundation to fund raise for and contribute to children. The name of the activity in that foundation is called “Mater Little Miracles”. When I conceived great interest towards it, representatives of the foundation kindly taught me a lot about it. Then, the name of “Japan Little Miracle” is cited from it.
That we people live and grow up and that a little miracle life lives are accumulation of daily little
miracles, aren’t they? We wish our children lived with full of joy for being born into this world. With a great gratitude to a little miracle of a life, we act and express, with all our heart, our welling up energy and love towards our children in Japan. This is the philosophy of this activity ”Japan Little Miracle”.
