North Korea leader Kim Jong Un
(Picture: AP)North Korea has been hit with another epidemic on top of the Covid-19 outbreak.
It remains unclear how many people are infected in what the official Korean Central News Agency said was "an acute enteric epidemic" in southwestern Haeju city.
Some observers say “an enteric epidemic” in North Korea refers to an infectious disease like typhoid, dysentery or cholera.
Such diseases routinely occur in North Korea, which lacks good water treatment facilities and whose public healthcare infrastructure largely remains broken since the mid-1990s.
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.
Kim Jong Un has offered his family’s reserve medicines for those diagnosed with “acute enteric epidemic" in the south-east Haeju city, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
The North’s main Rodong Sinmun newspaper separately carried a front page photo showing Mr Kim and his wife Ri Sol Ju reviewing saline solutions and other medicines that they were donating.
North Korea last month reported a rising number of patients with feverish symptoms.
"The outbreak of measles or typhoid isn’t uncommon in North Korea. I think it’s true there is an outbreak of an infectious disease there but North Korea is using it as an opportunity to emphasise that Kim is caring for his people," said Ahn Kyung-su, head of dprkhealth.org, a website focusing on health issues in North Korea.
"So it’s more like a political message than medical one."
Last month Mr Kim sent his family’s medicines to Covid patients, according to state media reports.
KCNA said more than 4.5 million out of the country’s 26 million people have fallen ill due to an unidentified fever but only 73 have died.
The country has identified only a fraction of those as confirmed Covid cases due to an apparent lack of test kits in the country.
