Project to Provide Support for North Korean Infants through WHO
background
North Korean infants and pregnant women have become the most vulnerable groups due to North Korea’s chronic food shortage. In particular, North Korean children aged under 5 are estimated at 2.30 million, facing serious situations. A South Korean child is 20 cm taller and 10 kg heavier than his or her counterpart in North Korea. Moreover, the World Food Program estimates that North Korea’s infant mortality rate is nine times more than that of South Korea.
program details
The project amounts to around 10 million U.S. $. After being passed by the Inter-Korean Exchanges and Cooperation Promotion Consultative Meeting, the project is going to be carried out from this month. The project targeting North Korean infants and pregnant women will focus on the capacity building of workers in the field of public health and medical care, modernization of clinics in ris (villages) and hospitals in counties, improvement of a medical treatment system as well as its management capacity, and the building of medical services nets.
the plan to move forward
The Ministry of Unification will send its government official to the WHO and materialize an action plan with the Ministry’s active participation in the project as well as medical experts’ direct and indirect advice.
Beside this project with the WHO, the Ministry is also in consultation with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which has been conducting nutrition improvement and vaccine inoculation projects targeting North Korean children and pregnant women.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification will go ahead with the projects with putting the WHO and UNICEF at the center and also use South Korean NGOs as another channel to carry out projects in the same field.
For the time being, the South Korean government will center its efforts on carrying out projects to take advantage of the strengths of international organizations, such as capacity building, data collection and indexes developments, with a focus on vulnerable areas which are not accessible to South Korean civic organizations.
At the same time, the South Korean government will let South Korean civic groups secure their bases in every region through the overhaul of their on- going projects and will develop the talks between South and North Korean health authorities, if any, into cooperative projects between the authorities.
웹사이트: http://www.unikorea.go.kr
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2008년 6월 12일 16:41
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2008년 2월 14일 16:29