Failure of Sanitation, Energy and Health Systems
The threats from famine were compounded by severe damage to health systems and water, sanitation, and energy distribution systems. The DPRK lost an estimated 85% of hydroelectric capacity from damage caused by the floods, along with coal mines, supplies and transport facilities, reducing the ability for the country to produce its own energy. UN officials reported a complex set of problems, commenting that the power shortage problem of 1995-1997
was not due to a shortage of oil as only two of two dozen power stations were dependent on heavy fuel oil for power generation... and these were supplied by KEDO (the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization).... About 70% of power generated in the DPRK came from hydropower sources, and the serious winter-spring droughts of 1996 and 1997 (and a breakdown on one of the Yalu River’s large hydro turbines) created major shortages throughout the country at that time, severely cutting back railway transportation (which was almost entirely dependent on electric power), which in turn resulted in coal supply shortages to the coal-fueled power stations which supplied the remaining 20% of power in the country.With breakdowns in the energy sector, and contamination of water sources due to the failure of sanitation facilities, the health care system was unable to cope with the situation. Inadequate inputs and power failure combined with outdated training and knowledge about health care techniques and procedures led to a health care crisis that added to the overall devastation. According to a 1997 UNICEF delegation,
hospitals were clean but wards were devoid of even the most rudimentary supplies and equipment; sphygmomanometers, thermometers, scales, kidney dishes, spatulas, IV giving sets, etc. The mission saw numerous patients being treated with home made beer bottle IV sets, clearly unsterile. There was an absence of ORS (oral rehydration solution) and even the most basic drugs such as analgesics and antibiotics.With almost the entire infrastructure in some sort of disrepair, the famine escalated to crisis levels.
Read more about this topic: North Korean Famine
Famous quotes containing the words failure, energy, health and/or systems:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person.... Yes, it is women who keep the church going.”
—Don Marquis (1878–1937)