The first shipments of international medical aid are this week to arrive at North Korea’s borders to shore up its defenses against COVID-19, but strict border controls could mean that the stream of supplies remains a trickle.
Some aid organizations had to get emergency sanction exemptions from the UN to clear the way for the shipments and are now navigating North Korea’s border controls imposed to shut out the virus.
North Korea has reported no confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus that was first detected in China late last year, although a top US military official last week said that he is “fairly certain” there are infections in North Korea.
North Korea is especially vulnerable to an outbreak, as its health system lacks resources, in part because of international sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, aid organizations said.
Aid groups have made urgent pleas for the UN to grant sanctions exemptions and it has approved six-month waivers for the WHO, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and Doctors Without Borders to send thermometers, portable ventilators, resuscitators, gloves, face shields, masks, gowns and goggles.
The UN Children’s Fund, which has said that it did not need a waiver to import personal protective equipment such as gloves, protective suits and respiratory equipment, expected its first shipment to be delivered to North Korea by land from China this week.
However, North Korea’s own strict border quarantine measures have kept some initial shipments waiting, humanitarian sources said.
More supplies of items from masks to test machines, sent by international agencies, were being held up in China, despite North Korea asking for them, said two sources with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“North Koreans need assistance and have asked for it, but things are now on hold,” one source from a humanitarian group said.
The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency on Friday last week reported that as part of “super strong prevention measures,” all imported goods were being quarantined for 10 days.
State media have shown workers in protective gear disinfecting trains and trucks.
Doctors Without Borders media coordinator Maya Zahran told reporters that the group’s supplies had arrived in Beijing and the border city of Dandong, and North Korean authorities had agreed to facilitate transport, despite the border closures.
She said that she could not confirm when the supplies would reach North Korea.
The IFRC said that it was working hard to send “urgently required goods,” but had to consider “restrictions on incoming goods” to North Korea.
It did not say when it expected its shipment to arrive.
The WHO did not respond to calls from reporters.
Experts have said that the planned supplies to help contain the coronavirus in North Korea are far short of what it needs.
Harvard Medical School’s Kee Park, who has worked on healthcare projects in North Korea, said that a lack of testing equipment might mean that infections are going undiscovered.
“To confirm it you have to actually do confirmatory diagnostic testing,” he said.
North Korea has said that it is monitoring thousands of people with possible symptoms.
Russia said that it had donated 1,500 coronavirus test kits at North Korea’s request.
“We should do everything in our power to provide help without delay, because this is an emergency situation,” Park said.
North Korea has a high number of doctors per capita, and the authoritarian government is capable of controlling or blocking the movement of people.
However, its health system is chronically under-resourced, defectors and foreign medical experts said.
Garment factories were manufacturing masks instead of clothes, state media reported.
On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un broke ground on a new hospital in the capital, Pyongyang.
He lamented the poor health sector and ordered that the facility be completed by October.
Many North Korean defectors have said that sick people have to rely on smuggled medicine or illicit drugs for treatment.
Seoul-based Severance Hospital International Health Care Center director John Linton said that some doctors scoured mountains for medicinal herbs.
North Korea has made “indirect” requests to South Korean aid groups for supplies including masks, said Linton, who has worked on building operating rooms and tuberculosis projects in North Korea.
He did not know if any had been sent.
Sanctions prohibit the import of computers or metal objects to North Korea, which restricts its ability to repair medical equipment, Linton said.
“IV [intravenous] fluid is actually made in hospitals,” he said. “Beer bottles or whatever bottles are used as containers for IV fluids, made at home.”
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS