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A 75-year-old Japanese man has died after 25 hospitals refused to admit him 36 times over the course of two hours. The case highlights the increasing strain on the Japanese health care system, due to an increasingly geriatric population and few young people to take their spots as professionals.

According to the AFP, the man lived alone in the city of Kuki, about an hour and a half north of Tokyo, the capital city of Japan. He called an ambulance after suffering from breathing problems in his home.

However, once the ambulance arrived, it found that it had no place to treat him. The paramedics, who had rushed to treat the man, were told by 25 neighboring hospitals that they had no room to treat the man, either lacking available doctors or available beds. Some hospitals were contacted more than once, which was why he was rejected 36 times by the 25 hospitals. This process took more than two hours.

Eventually, the ambulance made a 20-minute drive to a hospital in the neighboring Ibaraki prefecture. Shortly after his arrival, sadly, the man was pronounced dead. The cause of his death has not been released to the press.

One paramedic said to the Jiji Press that he had never witnessed a patient being rejected so many times.

Even before the tragedy, Kuki had already asked hospitals in the area to improve their emergency room capacity. It is not known whether hospitals responded to the suggestion.

In Japan, healthcare is held to a high global standard and is heavily subsidized by taxpayers. However, healthcare operators are already becoming strained. That is only set to become worse as Japan's population becomes older and fewer young people enter the workplace.

Already, Japan's elderly population is one of the largest, in terms of proportion, in the world. In 2010, the United Nations reported that 23 percent of Japan's population was over the age of 65; by 2050, it is expected that 38.8 percent of the country will fall into that age group.