Deadly "mutant" tuberculosis could kill thousands in North Korea, experts fear

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And one leading doctor has claimed political tensions between the US and North Korea may have influenced the decision.



The warning follows a decision by the Global Fund, an international financing organisation for combating AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, to withdraw support for the treatment of TB in North Korea from the end of June.



TB, which is the world’s biggest infectious killer, infects more than 110,000 people in North Korea every year, with thousands dying as a result.



The country has one of the world’s highest rates of TB infection outside sub-Saharan Africa, with 4,000 patients annually receiving care for multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains.

North Korea's children are likely to be the first to suffer, say experts

16,000 children are on prevention programmes and 7,000 with the illness are receiving treatment.



Explaining its decision, the Global Fund, which has distributed almost £54million ($70 million) in the country in the last eight years through Unicef and the World Heath Organisation, cited “the unique operating environment” which blocked “the required level of assurance and risk management around the deployment of resources and the effectiveness of the grant” – presumably a reference to the difficulties of operating within the secretive nation



In an open letter sent to the Lancet, doctors from Harvard Medical School warned the cuts would lead to “massive stock outs of quality-assured TB drugs nationwide” which in in turn could result in the “rapid creation of drug-resistant TB strains” as treatment was rationed.



The letter added: “An explosion of MDR–TB in North Korea would take decades to clean up and could detrimentally affect the public health of bordering countries like China and South Korea.”

Tuberculosis is usually an infection of the lungs

Healthcare should not be used as a weapon US-based Dr Janet Furin

And doctors said the decision “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,” and represented a ‘catastrophic betrayal of the people of DPRK’.”



US-based doctor Jennifer Furin, told the Telegraph: “I think it has to be for political reasons.



“Healthcare should not be used as a weapon.



“And certainly health care around tuberculosis given that this is an airborne disease. TB in any region of the world is a problem for all of us.”