Sanctions endangering lives

N. Korean doctors unable to procure medicine for TB patients

PYONGYANG: Dr O Yongil swings open a glass door with an orange biohazard sign and gestures to the machine he hoped would revolutionise his life’s work. As chief of North Korea’s tuberculosis laboratory, Dr O saw it as a godsend.

Tuberculosis is North Korea’s biggest public health problem.

With the Americanmade GeneXpert, his lab would be able to complete a TB test in two hours instead of two months. It took years, but Dr O got the machines, only to discover GeneXpert needs cartridges he can’t replace.

It’s not clear how they would violate sanctions imposed on North Korea because its nuclear programme, but no one, it seems, is willing to help him procure them and risk angering Washington.

Despite budding détente on the Korean Peninsula since the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jongun, sanctions championed by the US and Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy continue to generate hesitation and fear of even unintentional violations.

And that is keeping lifesaving medicines and supplies from thousands of North Korean tuberculosis patients.

Dr O’s laboratory, built with help from Stanford University and the Christian Friends of Korea aid group, has essentially been running on empty since April.

The idle GeneXperts may soon be the least of his troubles.

Two weeks ago, the Genevabased Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria ended all its North Korearelated grants, saying it could no longer accept the North’s “unique operating conditions”.

The fund has dispersed more than US$100mil (RM404mil) since 2010 to help North Korea control tuberculosis.

Last year it supported the treatment of about 190,000 patients.

Spokesman Seth Faison said the fund is providing buffer stocks of medicines and health products through June next year. It welcomes the “positive diplomatic efforts underway” between Pyongyang and its neighbours, he said, but the fund’s position stands.

The decision shocked the doctors at the Pyongyang tuberculosis lab, who praised Global Fund for its past work but accused it of bowing to pressure from the United States, one of its biggest donors.

The fund’s retreat sparked outrage outside North Korea as well.

In a letter published in the medical journal Lancet, Harvard physician Kee Park, director of North Korea programmes for the Korean American Association, warned the fund’s withdrawal could create a public health crisis and called the move “a cataclysmic betrayal” of the North Korean people.