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Korean nurseries 'running on empty'

Wednesday, 14 May 1997: UNICEF plans to fly high-energy milk immediately to severely malnourished children in Kangwon province in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and begin training hospital staff in therapeutic feeding techniques and malnutrition-related health problems.

A UNICEF team on a recent mission to the south-eastern province saw many such malnourished children in nurseries, kindergartens, hospitals and at home.

Donors have responded slowly to a United Nations consolidated inter-agency appeal for $126 million announced on 7 April 1997 for assistance to the flood-stricken country, and food aid is arriving far too slowly.

Officials at one polyclinic in Kangwon Province told the UNICEF team that as much as 30 per cent of their local population was affected by some form of malnutrition. In another part of the province, Tongchon county, the mission learned that agricultural yields were expected to be 10 per cent of normal and that the shortage of food was "absolute".

Many hospitals visited by UNICEF lacked the most rudimentary supplies. Soap was said to be in short supply almost everywhere, as two years of flooding had devastated industrial production.

According government figures released in April, malnutrition children under five nationwide was 15.6 per cent, numbering 324,000 children. In April, in Huichon city, an industrial town north of the capital Pyongyang, UNICEF found almost half the 8,860 children registered in nurseries and kindergartens in some degree malnourished. UNICEF then sent nine tons of high-energy milk and trained local staff in therapeutic feeding techniques.

UNICEF mission chief Anthony Hewett says the 40,000 plus kindergartens and nurseries in the country have been "running on empty" for months now, with little or no food. As a consequence, many children whose families are short of food have ceased to attend. UNICEF estimates that nationwide, as few as 30 to 50 percent of children are attending nurseries or kindergartens, where formerly they were fed. The first priority, says Mr. Hewett, is to pump enough food into the system to get children back to nurseries, kindergartens and, where necessary, into hospitals.

UNICEF warns that, until these institutions are back in full operation, children will continue to slip into the downward spiral of illness and malnutrition. Flood damage and the resulting destruction of industrial and social structures is forcing the most vulnerable groups into "potentially lethal nutritional decline," according to Mr. Hewett.

The first shipment of grain supplied by the World Food Programme (WFP) arrived on 7 May 1997. Some 130,000 tonnes is due to arrive in the coming months. This compares, says Mr. Hewett, with the government-stated need of about 100,000 tons per month up to March 1998.

In addition, the UN inter-agency appeal called for therapeutic milk for severely malnourished children under six. Not enough of these supplies have been arriving either. There is also a shortage of the type of food needed for mildly or moderately malnourished children, who need oil or soybeans mixed with grain to increase calorie density.

UNICEF is hoping for a stronger response from donors to the crisis and meanwhile will continue to work in collaboration with WFP, to help maintain food supply to nurseries, kindergartens and hospitals. It will also supply antibiotics and hospital equipment to treat hunger-related diseases.

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