결핵으로 죽어가는 북녘 동포들

Mercy for the sick and afflicted in North Korea: potential TB catastrophe!

하바드 의대 교수의 연구 결과에 의하면 2030년까지 1천만 북한의 결핵 환자들이 사망할 수 있다고 합니다.

치료 가능한 북한의 결핵 환자들을 돕기 위해 오랫동안 헌신적으로 희생을 해온 미국인 닥터들과 신부님, 시민단체들의 기사를 첨부합니다.

절망이 있는 곳에 희망을

--시몬천 드림

“I want to be together with the Korean people, trying to make their lives a little bit more happy and joyful...just as others are trying to do here in the States...I want to build some patient rooms for the 20 percent of people who are not cured so they are able to die with dignity...Also, we don’t want them to go back to their families and spread the disease.”

Maryknoll Father Gerard Hammond, a recipient of Gaudium et Spes Award from the Knights of Columbus for his manifestation of mercy, has made more than fifty trips delivering medical supplies and care for patients with tuberculosis since 1995.

Potential TB catastrophe in North Korea:

1 million in North Korea will die from tuberculosis alone by 2030

(Dr. Kee B. Park Harvard Medical School)

Dear friend--an urgent appeal to prevent an uncontrolled drug-resistant TB epidemic in North Korea! As you know, airborne infection such as TB can be developed into an epidemic.

What Is TB? “Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that usually attacks the lungs, but can attack almost any part of the body. Tuberculosis is spread from person to person through the air. When a person with TB in their lungs or throat coughs, laughs, sneezes, sings, or even talks, the germs that cause TB may spread through the air. If another person breathes in these germs there is a chance that they will become infected with tuberculosis.”

https://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/tuberculosis/learn-about-tuberculosis.html

EMERGENCY AID needed: June, July and August!

The transmission of tuberculosis looms unless we take action NOW!

1.North Korea: one of the world's highest rates of tuberculosis and faces a crisis as a shortfall of life-saving drugs looms.

2.More than 16,000 North Koreans are infected with the most dangerous strain of TB. In the next 5 years, in addition to previous estimates of the death toll, 155,000 to 210,000 more will die.

3.Stocks of TB drugs will run out by June 2020.

4.Supplies need to be ordered, 9 months in advance, from the Europe-based Global Drug Facility, which manufactures a product that controls four strains of TB in one medication.

5.That leaves only THREE months for the medication to be pre-ordered.

6.Potential catastrophe if new drugs are NOT ordered now.

7."The tendency in [South Korea], as well as in the United States, is to lump emergency aid with developmental aid and use it as a negotiation carrot...And that is the wrong message all around. What it basically ends up doing is killing people."

8.North Korea unable to mobilize funds to buy much-needed medications and supplies for its domestic health care system due to the global sanction regime sanctions and North Korea's being fire-walled from the global financial system.

References: Mercy for the sick and afflicted in North Korea

1. Charity group calls for provision of TB medication to N. Korea. Stephen Linton, chairman of the [The Eugene Bell] foundation, who led the delegation to the North, expressed frustration over difficulties in pursuing its projects due to the political situation. "Regardless of inter-Korean relations, U.S.-North Korea relations or the progress in denuclearization, patients in North Korea should be able to receive accurate diagnosis and treatment," he said in Korean. https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20190530009900325

2. Shortage of tuberculosis drugs looms in North Korea. UPI 북한 결핵난 심각한 위기. 2019년 6월로 예상되는 결핵 치료제 공백사태를 우려하며, 범정치적 사안인 북한주민의 결핵치료 지원 호소. 국제 사회 도움 절실

"An explosion of MDR-TB in North Korea would take decades to clean up..."

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/05/30/Shortage-of-tuberculosis-drugs-looms-in-North-Korea/2921559207637/

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/questions-hang-over-north-korean-food-supply-as-clock-ticks-on-tb-catastrophe/

3. The Forgotten North Korea Threat. This is because North Korea has one of the highest rates of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the world. Despite accounting for just one-third of one percent of the world population, North Korea is the source of 2.2 percent of new cases of MDR-TB. Overall, its rate of tuberculosis is twenty incidents of MDR-TB per one-hundred-thousand people. North Korea is one of the most dangerous countries that can spread tuberculosis. More than sixteen-thousand North Koreans are infected with this highly dangerous strain of tuberculosis. Within five years, in addition to previous estimates of the death poll, 155,000 to 210,000 more North Koreans will die...By 2030, Dr. Park estimates that 1 million in North Korea will die from tuberculosis alone, according to his calculations of system dynamics and agent-based modeling. It is in America’s own interests to address health issues before conducting business with North Korea. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/korea-watch/forgotten-north-korea-threat-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-55442

4. North Korea’s silent health crisis. There’s a healthcare emergency in North Korea, and a peace declaration won’t fix it. North Korea already struggles with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, which cannot be cured with the two most powerful drugs usually used to treat TB. The WHO estimated there were 4,100 such cases in the country in 2017, but less than half of affected patients had started treatment. The Eugene Bell Foundation is another prominent NGO working on tuberculosis in North Korea. However, the group says its 12 treatment centres for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis can only hold 1,500 patients combined, meaning many North Koreans are unable to access its programmes.

http://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2019/02/25/north-korea-s-silent-health-crisis

5. [ISSUE TALK] TB crisis in North Korea’s `emergency situation’: One-on-one with Stephen Linton of the Eugene Bell Foundation

Dr. Stephen Linton, the founder and chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation. Founded in 1995, the charity works to provide medical humanitarian assistance to North Korea, specifically in the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

http://www.arirang.com/News/News_View.asp?nseq=227377

6. [INTERVIEW] NGOs 'better at solving some of North Korea's intractable problems

"North Korean caregivers do all that they can and are very devoted to their TB patients ," he said. "Good TB treatment is a community effort. Instead of the Eugene Bell Foundation, donors who make voluntary contributions to make it possible for us to send medications should also get more recognition."https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/12/103_260324.html

7. Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un: authoritarian love in the time of TB

While Kim and Trump both fetishize the fiction of hermetically sealed national borders — whether to keep in a miserable population or keep out refugees seeking asylum — airborne infections care nothing about such imagined lines, walled or otherwise. Air is shared, people move, and the transmission of tuberculosis will continue unabated. The odds that a regionally and uncontrolled drug-resistant TB epidemic will emerge grows by the day.

https://www.statnews.com/2018/11/19/donald-trump-kim-jong-un-tuberculosis/

8. Priest who’s visited North Korea more than 50 times wonders if he can go again

When Pope Francis visited South Korea in 2014, he praised Hammond for his “wonderful work” in North Korea, the priest recalled. Earlier this month, Hammond received the Gaudium et Spes Award from the Knights of Columbus, the largest lay group in the Catholic Church. The award — first given in 1992, to Mother Teresa — was presented to Hammond for his “heroic” work in North Korea. At the ceremony, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said Hammond’s mission was the manifestation of mercy: “Visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, and feeding the hungry in body and soul.” Hammond hopes to use the $100,000 award money to build new facilities in North Korea to house terminal patients. “I want to build some patient rooms for the 20 percent of people who are not cured so they are able to die with dignity,” he said. “Also, we don’t want them to go back to their families and spread the disease.” But international sanctions now make it very difficult to export any goods into North Korea, whether or not they’re prohibited. The Eugene Bell Foundation had difficulties getting its medicines out of South Korea last year for this reason.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/priest-whos-visited-north-korea-more-than-50-times-wonders-if-he-can-go-again/2017/08/29/73df6c92-8bd4-11e7-a2b0-e68cbf0b1f19_story.html?utm_term=.5687e96dbb3a

9. Doug Hostetter. Sanctions and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pax Christi International UN Representative, New York. Peace Stories, A project of Pax Christi International, the global Catholic movement for peace. In the past 12 years, we have witnessed the abject failure of the use of sanctions and military threats to get the DPRK to dismantle its programs for nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles. It is now time for us to give support to dialogue...need to be continued to end the Korean War, lift sanctions, normalize the relations between the US and the DPRK and establish a Korean Peninsula Nuclear Free Zone - a Korea Peninsula free of nuclear weapons and protected from threat of nuclear attack by international treaty. https://paxchristipeacestories.com/2019/01/16/sanctions-and-the-democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea/

10. Prize-winning missionary on North Korea: “People are the same everywhere”. CRUX. Taking the Catholic Pulse

https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2017/08/02/prize-winning-missionary-north-korea-people-everywhere/

11. Kim Dae-jung. Nobel Lecture. I have lived, and continue to live, in the belief that God is always with me. I know this from experience. https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2000/dae-jung-lecture.html

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