Despite detente, sanctions on North Korea fan TB epidemic
Source: Associated Press
By ERIC TALMADGE
1 hour ago
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) Doctor O Yong Il swings open a glass door with a bright orange biohazard sign and gestures to the machine he hoped would revolutionize his lifes work. Its called the GeneXpert and its about the size of a household microwave oven. As chief of North Koreas National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory, Dr. O saw it as a godsend.
Tuberculosis is North Koreas biggest public health problem. With this American-made machine, his lab would be able to complete a TB test in just two hours, instead of two months.
It took years, but Dr. O got the machines, only to discover that GeneXpert needs cartridges he cant replace. Its not entirely clear what about the cartridges would violate international sanctions. For a long time, the producer refused to disclose what agents were inside because that was patented information. But it doesnt really matter. No one, it seems, is willing to help him procure them from abroad and run the risk of angering Washington.
Despite a budding mood of detente on the Korean Peninsula since the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month in Singapore, ongoing sanctions championed by the U.S. and Trumps maximum pressure policy continue to generate an atmosphere of hesitation and the fear of even unintentional violations. And that is keeping lifesaving medicines and supplies from thousands of North Korean tuberculosis patients.
Read more: https://apnews.com/f748798fb371485aa41b9bbb3ed55156/Despite-detente,-sanctions-on-North-Korea-fan-TB-epidemic
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)This isn't about one treatment delivery system, but Trump may be involved and the situation is potentially far more dangerous -- to Americans also from potentially drug-immune strains of extremely contagious (airborne!!!) deadly disease exploding on the planet -- than this narrow AP article suggests.
While the rogue states nuclear ambitions have long inspired angstand led to economic sanctionsthe threat of TB, the planets biggest infectious killer, has garnered less attention. With more than 100,000 cases in 2016, North Korea is on the World Health Organizations list of nations with the greatest incidence of the deadly lung disease, and doctors warn that an explosion in multidrug-resistant strains could be coming.
The closure of programs is likely to lead to massive stock outs of quality-assured TB drugs nationwide, wrote Harvard Medical School doctors in an open letter to the Global Fund, published on March 14 in the British medical journal the Lancet. Such privation in the past has led to the rapid creation of drug-resistant TB strains, as doctors ration pills and patients take incomplete regimens, they wrote. ...
In an open letter to the Geneva-based organization published on March 13 by the Korean Central News Agency, North Koreas official news agency, Kim Hyong Hun, the countrys vice minister of public health, accused the Global Fund of bowing to the pressure of some hostile forces. President Trump has been trying to enlist other nations in a campaign of sanctions against North Korea.
The decision to suspend the Global Fund projects in North Korea, with almost no transparency or publicity, runs counter to the ethical aspiration of the global health community, which is to prevent death and suffering due to disease, irrespective of the government under which people live, Seung and his colleagues wrote in the Lancet.
Furin sees it as another dimension of the tensions between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom the U.S. president nicknamed Little Rocket Man after the nation tested its missile capabilities in September. The two nations are slated to meet in an historic summit as early as May. You cant help but think global powers are very concerned about North Koreas erratic behavior, and this is a way to punish the country, she says.
But this is a weapon of destruction in and of itself. TB is an airborne disease. It doesnt stay within borders.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/north-korea-s-other-weapon-is-poised-to-explode
The world came close to eradicating TB in the 1970s, but with relatively few cases at that point, reliable treatment, etc., we slacked off.