Global charity stops aid to N.Korea

WASHINGTON — The world’s leading provider of malaria and tuberculosis aid to North Korea is ending its grants to the isolated country, citing concerns that donated supplies weren’t going to their intended purposes.

The decision by The Global Fund comes amid increasingly tight sanctions in North Korea in retaliation for its nuclear weapons program, and it could worsen health conditions in the isolated country. But in a littlenoticed Feb. 21 statement on its website, the Global Fund said it had little choice but to end grants to North Korea, a decision confirmed by a spokesman on Wednesday. The decision brings to a close the dispersal of a reported $103 million in medical aid to the north since 2010.

“The Global Fund could not gain adequate assurance that resources were going where intended,” Seth Faison, the group’s communications director, said in an email to McClatchy.

Based in Geneva, the Global Fund finances international efforts to fight infectious diseases. It has worked with UNICEF to distribute tuberculosis medicines and netting to prevent malaria in North Korea over the past eight years, a period when many charities pulled out of the country. In 2016, it funded medicines that helped treat more than 194,000 tuberculosis patients and the distribution of more than 2.2 million insecticide-treated nets.

Some public health experts warn that Global Fund’s cutoff of grants could lead to needless deaths and the spread of infectious diseases that — especially for malaria — can cross borders.

“This decision is mind-boggling and shocking to anyone working in North Korea,” said Dr. Kwonjune “K.J.” Seung, an international tuberculosis expert affiliated with the Eugene Bell Foundation, a charity that treats drug-resistant tuberculosis patients in North Korea.

North Korea has some of the highest rates of tuberculosis in the world, said Seung, and the Global Fund has been the dominant provider of medicines to treat patients there with normal tuberculosis.