Alice Jean Suh of Eugene Bell Foundation writes about North Korean physicians visiting the U.S. (story below my comment).

Now, while no doubt well-intentioned, this kind of remedy is like putting a bandaid on a cancer patient. What North Korea needs is a radical treatment — the elimination of the current regime and absorption by South Korea with extensive U.S. and Japanese assistance. When that happens, TB will go away as it did in South Korea.

We have to treat the cause, not a symptom of the North Korean malaise.

Public health officials and physicians from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) last week made a rare nine-day visit to the United States for a medical exchange program on drug-resistant tuberculosis. The five-person delegation was hosted by the Eugene Bell Foundation, an American faith-based organization that provides essential support to one-third of North Korea’s tuberculosis system.

The North Korean medical delegation attended lectures and tours at national tuberculosis centers, medical schools, and research laboratories in Washington, DC, Baltimore, MD, Newark, NJ, Harlem, NY, and Denver CO. The delegation included doctors from North Korea’s Ministry of Public Health, Central Tuberculosis Preventive Institute, and Pyongyang Medical University Hospital.

During the trip, the North Korean doctors attended an international
conference at the George Washington University in Washington, DC where, for the first time, North and South Korean tuberculosis experts were present in the same room. The Koreans, along with over 30 leading experts on global health, exchanged views on including local communities in the global fight against drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Despite political tensions between the US and the North Korean governments, the Eugene Bell Foundation stressed its continued commitment to the sick and the suffering in North Korea.

“Tuberculosis has killed more Koreans in the last century than famine and war combined,” said Dr. Stephen Linton, chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation. “TB is the country’s most feared disease. It is unthinkable that EugeneBell and our donors would abandon the country’s neediest people. Our medical program emphasizes our long-term commitment to fighting this deadly and contagious disease.”

The North Korean doctors visited the Aeras Global Tuberculosis Vaccine Foundation in Rockville, MD, which receives funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They also visited the headquarters of Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, MD, and attended a day-long conference in Washington, DC sponsored by the George Washington University medical and public health schools.

The North Koreans also visited two of the three national “Model TB Centers” recognized by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the early 1990s for their response to an alarming increase in drug-resistant tuberculosis in the United States. These centers served high-risk urban populations in Newark (New Jersey Medical School Global TB Institute) and Harlem (Charles P. Felton National TB Center at Harlem Hospital/Columbia University Medical School).

The delegation’s final stop was in Denver, where they visited the nation’s leading respiratory hospital and tuberculosis reference laboratory at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center. Dr. Michael Iseman, considered one of the world’s top tuberculosis experts, and Dr. Leonid Heifets, director of National Jewish’s world-renowned mycobacterial laboratory, both spent two days with the North Korean doctors discussing affordable treatment options with them.

The Eugene Bell Foundation currently makes two trips a year to visit over 40 tuberculosis hospitals and care centers sponsored by the foundation’s donors. The majority of these medical institutions are in remote rural areas and, like the rest of the world, they have seen an alarming increase in drug-resistant tuberculosis.

**We thank the Asan Foundation for their generous support of this program.