FAMILIES in North Korea are existing on one third the recommended minimum intake for survival, and the communist country's health system has completely collapsed, according to Red Cross officials who arrived in Beijing at the weekend after a tour of the isolated Stalinist state.
"People are really suffering," said Mr Geoff Dennis, director of the British Red Cross international department. He announced that Red Cross food aid would be expanded five fold to reach 700,000 of the country's 23 million population between now and the end of November.
"The food shortage is very visible," Mr Dennis said. "Public food distribution has been reduced to 100-150 grammes of rice and maize per day which is one third of the recommended minimum. We saw malnourished and sick children and elderly in many places and we met people who cooked grassroots and bark for survival - they're grinding it up and mixing it with other food."
He said hospitals and clinics had practically no drugs except local herb based medicines, and hospitals were running at about 10 per cent of capacity, taking only the very sick.
He was very concerned about the immediate future. "Ware houses are empty or about to be empty and it will be a very critical situation up to the next harvest in October," he said. "Five million tonnes is the absolute maximum harvest for the country this year while the total need will be 7.4 million tonnes. I don't think they'll reach it."
Mr Dennis said farm machinery was broken down and great swathes of land were still buried under sand left by the floods of the last two years which destroyed the grain harvests. North Korea had already lost vital aid from its former ally, Russia, particularly oil. He believed the likelihood of new floods was very high because the damaged land would be quickly inundated by heavy rain, and North Korea was also very vulnerable to drought as the irrigation system bad been destroyed.
Many rural families managed to ward off famine because they were able to grow small amounts of food on tiny vegetable plots, Mr Dennis said. "The cities are worse off than the countryside because people there can't grow their own food"
The Red Cross will expand its operation from 15 to 19 counties in North Korea in the period from July 1st to November. In that time 50,000 tonnes of food will be distributed. They would target the most vulnerable. The Red Cross would also inject $2.25 million (IR£1.4 million) into programmes to provide basic drugs and medical equipment to hospitals and health clinics in the target areas, he said.