Films from North Korea
Mission East is the only Danish relief organization that has been given access to distribute food aid in North Korea. We have been invited to do so by the North Korean government, in co-operation with a Finnish partner organization.
Mission East is responsible for the monitoring of the distribution of the aid, in order to ensure that it reaches the children that are in most need.
This 11 month-old girl is hospitalized in a children’s hospital in Wanson City in the eastern part of North Korea. The hospital has almost 200 beds, and right now 25 children are hospitalized with symptoms of acute malnourishment such as diarrhea. This girl has been in the hospital for four days. For the past six months the girl has had regular episodes of diarrhea and sometimes vomiting. She weights 7.3 kg and receives milk powder and some porridge from the hospital.
Mission East, Kim Hartzner Managing Director, himself a medical doctor, visited the hospital at the end of November 2011:
“At no point did I see any kind of appropriate medical treatment of these children, no intravenous feeding and no special diet for children suffering from acute malnutrition. In Denmark they would have received therapeutic feeding with nutritional bars containing high levels of proteins and fats. The hospital had not received such kind of food from the UN since December 2010, a fact that was confirmed to us in later conversations with the UN. Instead the children received food in the form of rice, herbs and milk powder. The latter is fine, but the rest is completely inadequate.”
The malnourished children need powder like TopNutri which Mission East has included in our food rations in North Korea. The children’s hospital has received TopNutri from Mission East since the end of November 2011.
North Koreamalnourished childrenMission EastTopNutrichildren's hospital
