BEIJING - Recent floods in North Korea which killed at least 600 people have put a terrible extra strain on the underfunded health system and the country is requesting medical help over food, a senior aid worker said on Thursday.
Richard Rumsey, the Asia Pacific Regional Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Director for World Vision who has just returned from North Korea, said he was also satisfied assistance was getting to the people who needed it.
"We understand that around 30 percent of the health infrastructure has been damaged or washed away," he told Reuters in an interview at Beijing airport. "The main request from the North Korean authorities at this stage is medical assistance."
Apart from a few showcase spots in the capital Pyongyang, much of the North's infrastructure is a shambles, with the communist state still using rail lines and power systems built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the peninsula.
"The hospitals are in a very difficult situation there. Under normal circumstances in North Korea, the normal drug supplies to hospitals are only 50 percent provided by government. So aid is needed on a day-to-day basis regardless of any flooding situation," Rumsey said.
North Korea was hit by some of its worst flooding in decades last month, killing at least 600 people, according to the official KCNA news agency.
Flooding in the southern half of the country destroyed thousands of buildings, left more than 300,000 people homeless and wiped out more than 11 percent of the land for grains and maize in a country that already battles chronic food shortages, it said.
