North Korean authorities have announced that hundreds of families are suffering from an intestinal disease in the southwest of the country.
North Korea claimed on Friday that hundreds of families are suffering from bowel disease, further straining a failing health system already battered by a Covid-19 outbreak.
In May, Pyongyang announced its first case of coronavirus and triggered a “maximum state of emergency” over the outbreak.
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The virus has hit the North Korean population, with the 25 million inhabitants not being vaccinated. State media have so far reported more than 4.5 million people with “fever”, as the official name for Covid-19 is known, and 73 deaths.
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The official KCNA news agency this week reported a new “acute enteric outbreak” in South Hwanghae Province (southwest) and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, urged officials to “contain the epidemic as soon as possible”.
In a possible sign of the seriousness of the situation, Kim Yo Jong, the leader’s sister, was among a group of high-ranking officials cited as having personally donated drugs to try to provide relief.
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The drugs will be distributed to “more than 800 families suffering from this severe epidemic that has broken out in parts of South Hwanghae Province”, KCNA reported on Friday. This figure suggests that at least 1600 people have been infected with this disease.
This information sparked speculation that this unspecified disease could be cholera or typhoid.
South Korea ready to help
If confirmed, the outbreak could worsen the country’s chronic food shortages, with South Hwanghae Province being one of North Korea’s main agricultural regions.
Experts have warned of the risk that the country will experience a serious health situation in the event of the spread of Covid, its healthcare system being one of the worst in the world.
This poor country has poorly equipped hospitals, few intensive care units and has no medicine to treat Covid or any mass screening capacity.
“Given the dilapidated medical infrastructure in the North, an acute intestinal disease could break out at any time,” said an official from the Seoul Unification Ministry, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
Seoul has expressed its readiness to help the North deal with the new outbreak, the same source added.
South Korea had already offered to send vaccines and lend a hand to the North to help it deal with the coronavirus epidemic.
Pyongyang has not officially responded to these proposals.
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