N. Korea’s Kim condemns own country’s health sector
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has denounced his own country’s health services, state media reported yesterday, criticising officials for being “very idle and irresponsible”.
Impoverished and isolated North Korea, which is subject to multiple sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its pursuit of nuclear weapons, suffers from chronic food shortages and inadequate health services according to international aid agencies.
Hospitals lack medicines, equipment, and trained staff.
While Pyongyang regularly proclaims its desire to provide its people with a better life, Kim roundly condemned its health system on a visit to a medical devices factory.
Some sectors “have made remarkable leaps forward in recent years” Kim said according to the official Korean Central News Agency, “but the public health sector has never done so and become more and more passive”.
“There is no unit keeping its environment well in the public health sector, to say nothing of equipment modernisation,” he added at the Myohyangsan Medical Appliances Factory.
Such “field guidance” visits by the leader are the mainstay of the North’s state media output, and a key part of the authorities’ domestic messaging, sometimes lauding the quality of projects and sometimes criticising officials.
The ruling Workers’ Party had stressed the need to improve health services, but “officials are very idle and irresponsible in doing so”, Kim said according to KCNA. — AFP