PRESS BRIEFING BY UNICEF REPRESENTATIVE IN BANGKOK

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNICEF REPRESENTATIVE IN BANGKOK

Anthony Hewett, representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Bangkok, told correspondents at a Headquarters briefing this afternoon that UNICEF had increased its appeal for the malnourished children in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from $4.7 million to $14.3 million.

Mr. Hewett said that the increase of UNICEF's appeal was due to the augmentation of what he described as "alarming incidents of severe malnutrition" developing in that country.

Up to 5 per cent of the under five-year-old children in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea were severely malnourished, according to UNICEF estimates, Mr. Hewett said. Severe malnourishment in such small children, he added, "is serious business". At least another 15 to 20 per cent were "moderately malnourished". Government estimates indicated that up to 38 per cent of the country's children under the age of five were malnourished "to some degree", a percentage that was not particularly surprising due to all the food shortages the country had gone through.

Mr. Hewett indicated that he preferred to stay away from the question of whether the situation there constituted a famine. "If you go [there], you will see people working the fields and in the cities, like a perfectly normal society. But the dark underside is to be seen in the children's centres", where signs of malnourishment had begun to appear.

The UNICEF was particularly concerned about the children in the severe and moderate stages of malnourishment, and also by the fact that the national health system, which needed "top speed" to handle the situation, was in fact currently "in terrible shape", Mr. Hewett said. The system, deprived of supplies and maintenance for several years, was now struggling "very hard" to be able to cope.

Furthermore, the interaction between the health problem and the food shortage in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea meant that "children could die, not from hunger but from disease", he said. Children "could go under very quickly", if there was an outbreak of measles or even respiratory infections, due to their weakened condition.

It was due to those factors that UNICEF had increased its appeal, and it was hoped that donors would respond, Mr. Hewett said. The Executive Director of UNICEF, Carol Bellamy, was due to visit the country in two weeks time, he added.

Opening the question-and-answer session, a correspondent asked whether there was any foreseeable end to the famine, and whether a good crop was

UNICEF Briefing - 2 - 24 July 1997

expected in the fall? Mr. Hewett said it depended, partly, on the weather; a torrential downpour such as the one in eastern Europe would be devastating. "Even in the best of circumstances -- adequate rain and not too much heat since the corn has already been damaged by the heat -- the harvest will not be enough to solve their problems because they don't have enough fertilizer. They have appealed for fertilizer. They have some, but not enough. These crops -- rice, corn -- require several doses of fertilizer and without that, they don't get the yield. So the harvest in October will not solve their problems", he said.

Efforts had been made to change the pattern of the crop-growing, he went on to say, but the hard currency needed for fertilizer and a short growing season all combined, along with a fragile environment susceptible to heavy rains from August to early September, to worsen the problem. Added to that was the bartering of both lumber and scrap metal for grain with Chinese merchants, which meant that "the assets of the country are being stripped to keep things going". The crisis would be a continuing one, he said.

What effect would the increased appeal have on the situation? a correspondent asked. Mr. Hewett recalled that the World Food Programme (WFP) had said that around 1 million or 1.2 million tonnes of food would be needed by the harvest time. "I think that now they are appealing for 330,000 tonnes, so clearly they feel they will be able to get more" bilateral contributions. There was still a general food shortage, though the pipeline of cereals -- corn and grain -- to the kindergartens attended by most of the country's children was flowing, "so that part of the equation is being dealt with". Also, in the current summer months the people had been growing vegetables and so had more to sustain them. Mr. Hewett added that it was "a continuing mystery" to those who had access to the overall figures, how the country had, in fact, managed to continue. "It's an incredibly disciplined society", he remarked. The UNICEF appeal would concentrate its efforts on the special feeding of the malnourished children.

What sort of access did UNICEF have? the correspondent asked. The Government did the distribution, Mr. Hewett said. The UNICEF had complete access to the institutions -- hospitals, nurseries, health centres for malnourished children -- which it provided with "high-energy milk", a special rehabilitative mixture for severely malnourished children. The UNICEF had enough of the high-energy milk to deal with 110,000 severely malnourished children, which was "our expectation of what will be needed". He emphasized that those were "the worst cases" of a total of approximately 2.5 million children.

What about the rest of the population? a correspondent asked. There was an increase in the health problems of the general population, particularly in the young and in the old, Mr. Hewett said. Part of the problem of the malnourished children, UNICEF suspected, might be due to the death of at least one parent, though that information was not usually available.

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