Children in hospital malnourished

Beijing - The head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) told yesterday of finding malnourished, ill children in a…

Beijing - The head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) told yesterday of finding malnourished, ill children in a paediatric hospital in famine stricken North Korea this week, reports Miriam Donohoe.

The WFP Director, Mrs Catherine Bertini, said almost all of the 140 children in the hospital she visited in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, suffered from a food-related illness or from drinking dirty water. She said other children she visited in an orphanage in Pyongyang were left there by mothers who did not have enough milk to feed their children. In many cases mothers had died in childbirth.

Mrs Bertini told a news conference in Bejing that while the situation in North Korea has improved, the country will continue to need aid to feed its people for years to come as structural problems stunt the country's economic growth.