Thursday 16 June 2022 05:58 PM Covid-hit North Korea is gripped by mystery new intestinal disease 'epidemic' trends now
North Korea has been gripped by a mystery new intestinal 'epidemic', the country said today, an unusual announcement from the secretive country that is already contending with a COVID-19 outbreak and severe economic turmoil.
It's unclear how many people are infected in what the official Korean Central News Agency said was 'an acute enteric epidemic' in southwestern Haeju city.
The agency didn't name the disease, but enteric refers to intestinal illnesses, such as typhoid, dysentery and cholera, which are caused by germs in contaminated food or water or contact with the feces of infected people.
Such diseases routinely occur in North Korea, where there is a shortage of water treatment facilities and the public health system has been largely broken for decades.
Some observers said the purpose of the announcement was not so much to report the infections themselves as to mention that leader Kim Jong Un donated medicine from his personal stock - an apparent effort to burnish his image at a moment of extreme hardship.
The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim donated medicine from what it referred to as his family's reserves, with a picture showing the dictator in a white lab coat along-side his wife sifting through boxes of medicine.
North Korea has been gripped by a mystery new intestinal 'epidemic', the country said today. The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim donated medicine from what it referred to as his family's reserves, with pictures showing the dictator in a white lab coat along-side his wife sifting through boxes of medicine
The country's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried the front-page photo showing Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, looking at saline solutions and medicine that the paper said they donated.
In a country where power is concentrated is the hands of a small ruling elite and hospitals often lack even
