By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Recent floods in North Korea which killed at least 600 people have put a terrible extra strain on the underfunded health system and the country is requesting medical help over food, a senior aid worker said on Thursday.
Richard Rumsey, the Asia Pacific Regional Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs Director for World Vision who has just returned from North Korea, said he was also satisfied assistance was getting to the people who needed it.
"We understand that around 30 percent of the health infrastructure has been damaged or washed away," he told Reuters in an interview at Beijing airport. "The main request from the North Korean authorities at this stage is medical assistance."
Apart from a few showcase spots in the capital Pyongyang, much of the North's infrastructure is a shambles, with the communist state still using rail lines and power systems built during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the peninsula.
"The hospitals are in a very difficult situation there. Under normal circumstances in North Korea, the normal drug supplies to hospitals are only 50 percent provided by government. So aid is needed on a day-to-day basis regardless of any flooding situation," Rumsey said.
North Korea was hit by some of its worst flooding in decades last month, killing at least 600 people, according to the official KCNA news agency.
Flooding in the southern half of the country destroyed thousands of buildings, left more than 300,000 people homeless and wiped out more than 11 percent of the land for grains and maize in a country that already battles chronic food shortages, it said.
World Vision had already flown in $3 million of medical aid, Rumsey said, adding it had visited two hospitals, seen villages where houses had been washed away and also been taken to some of their existing projects in the country.
"The disaster that we're currently seeing at the moment has exacerbated problems in the country, but our formal relationship with the authorities there has really helped with being able to come in and provide assistance where needed. That's been good," he said.
"There are challenges with access. World Vision doesn't have an operational presence in the country. Therefore it's sometimes quite difficult to verify the final destination of goods. However, we are satisfied at this stage that aid is getting through to the right people," Rumsey added.
Keen to project an image of strength and suspicious of outside intervention, North Korea rarely calls for foreign help. And the restrictions North Korea places on aid groups operating there make responding to the crisis all the more challenging.
As much as 10 percent of North Korea's 23 million people were killed in a famine in the mid-to-late 1990s, brought about by flooding, drought and years of mismanagement in the farm sector.
North Korea's recent appeal for aid was its first call in 12 years, since flooding in the 1990s led to a famine that some estimate killed as many as 2 million people.
The next challenge would be to see how much of the harvest could be salvaged ahead of the winter, Rumsey said.
"Once we see what the harvest is going to be like it's going to be necessary to reassess when and if the additional food aid is necessary to take people through the winter. It won't really be known until we see the outcome of the harvest in the next month or so."
