BEIJING — North Korea’s health care system is unable to provide sterilized needles, clean water, food and medicine, and patients are forced to undergo agonizing surgery without anesthesia, Amnesty International reported Thursday.
The human-rights group, citing World Health Organization statistics, said North Korea spent under $1 per capita on health care, the lowest in the world. The global average was $716 per capita.
The collapse of the health care system compounds the misery of a population that is chronically malnourished and suffering from digestive problems caused by eating weeds, tree bark, roots, corn husks, cobs and other “substitute” foods.
The poor diet also weakens the immune system, making people susceptible to diseases such as tuberculosis, which afflicts at least 5 percent of the population, according to the report. Meanwhile, about 45 percent of children under age 5 suffer stunted growth because of malnutrition.
“In view of the enormity of the food crisis in North Korea, health issues cannot be separated from the food insecurity that has gripped the country for almost two decades,” the report stated. “The people of North Korea suffer significant deprivation in their enjoyment of the right to adequate health care, in large part due to failed or counterproductive government policies.”
Amnesty International interviewed 40 people who had escaped North Korea, most of them between 2004 and 2009. They told harrowing tales about their experiences in the medical system.
“I was screaming so much from the pain, I thought I was going to die. They had tied my hands and legs to prevent me from moving,” said a 56-year-old woman from Musan who had an appendectomy without anesthesia.
North Korea once boasted of providing free, universal health care with a network of more than 44,000 general practitioners who would even make house calls. Although hospitalization remains free, the facilities are unsanitary and have no food, bandages or medicine.
North Korea went through a famine in the 1990s that killed about 2 million people. Following a gradual improvement after 2000, the food situation has again deteriorated as a result of botched economic policies and continued international isolation.
