Reporting on North Korea’s Health Care System: Truly Draconian or Overblown Hype?

Reporting on North Korea’s Health Care System: Truly Draconian or Overblown Hype?

In an Amnesty International report released on Thursday, July 15, the human rights watch organization reported on the state of what it calls North Korea’s “crumbling” health care system. The report gathered anecdotes from several North Korean defectors. These eye-witnesses claimed that health care in North Korea is virtually a contradiction in terms.

One witness, a twenty-four-year-old defector, said that he was amputated without the use of anesthesia. He is quoted in the report as saying, “Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain.”

The Amnesty report details specific problems embedded in the North Korean health care system, one of which was misdiagnoses of life-threatening disease. One interviewee told the story of his small son, who was infected with tuberculosis but was misdiagnosed as having a cold. When the boy was finally taken to a larger hospital after his severe cough persisted, the witness told a chilling story in which he paid the doctor with cigarettes:

“During the two months of incorrect diagnosis, we weren’t treating the correct disease so my son became very sick and weak. At the second hospital, he underwent an x-ray and blood test. This time, I gave the doctor 10 packs of cigarettes hoping for better service. I asked the doctor to share them among his colleagues. He was diagnosed with TB, which is very common in North Korea. The doctor wrote down what medicines I should buy for my son. Hospitals in North Korea no longer have medicines. Medical personnel either don’t receive any or if they do, they sell them in the markets.”

The Amnesty report was released to criticism by the World Health Organization, which recently claimed that the report’s methodology is skewed and unscientific. According to a BBC article, the WHO’s criticisms are based on the fact that the report was assembled using the testimony of only 40 North Korean defectors. WHO Spokesman Paul Garwood is quoted in the article as noting, “All the facts are from people who aren’t in the country.”

In April, WHO director-general Margaret Chan visited North Korea and said that its health care system is the envy of the developing world.

So who’s right, the WHO or Amnesty? While the morbid stories coming out of the Amnesty report are no doubt true, the report is in all likelihood not an accurate reflection of the country’s current health system as a whole, especially considering that many of the eyewitness reports are almost a decade old. Still, the WHO agrees that North Korea’s health system is far from perfect, and that disease and lack of infrastructure still plague the strict, insulated country.