sens along a from the San Francisco Examiner on Margaret Chan’s much-heralded first WHO Director-General visit to DPRK since 2001.”
“North Korea formally launched a medical videoconference network Tuesday aimed at giving smaller, rural hospitals access to specialists in the capital Pyongyang with the help of the World Health Organization.
WHO has been providing cameras, computers and other equipment to North Korea to help the reclusive, impoverished country connect a main hospital in Pyongyang with medical facilities in 10 provinces. The system is designed to allow doctors to talk to each other to provide additional services to rural patients.”
I reported on this yesterday, wondering why WHO Director-General Margaret Chan was overselling North Korea’s non existent healthcare system. Keeping with the theme, the unveiling of this 11 computer-strong network (1 central hospital + 10 provinical clinics = 11 computers) was in all likelihood a Pyongyang theater production for assembled Red Cross, Red Crescent, and WHO dignitaries. Still, I’m willing to stifle my laughter and treat it as a sign of progress in a country that doesn’t have working street lamps.
Trying to stifle….
Trying to stifle…
Trying to stifle…
No good. I have to take a deep breath. It’s impossible to take it seriously. The news is so out of place, isn’t it? North Korea’s average expenditure on health per person is somewhere around , and statements like this in the official make it sound like there are no medical personnel in the country:
Essential expertise such as for handling complications of pregnancy
and childbirth, treatment of severe infection in children, injuries
and acute surgery, are sometimes compromised.Hospital infection
control procedures require strengthening.
If there’s no expertise to handle births, infections, injuries, and surgeries, what are you left with?
If, however, despite all of North Korea’s obvious human tragedies and resource shortages, this hospital teleconference thing turns out to be an early sign of things that come, could we find ourselves fifteen years from now talking about how North Korea leapfrogged the telephone and went straight to Skype? Could there be a Skype Revolution? A Vonage Victory? New York Times headlines that read, “they don’t have shoes, but do have iPads!”
Thank you to for cc’ing his content on flickr.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Damjan DeNoble. Damjan DeNoble said: N.Korean Hospitals Now Linked By Video-conference! Thank you @gtowna for the heads up! [...]