Hey everyone check this out, according to the New York Times:
With help from scientists from Stanford University’s medical school, North Korea has developed its first laboratory capable of detecting drug-resistant tuberculosis, scientists involved in the project said last week.
Tuberculosis surged in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea during the famines of the 1990s. (Starvation suppresses the immune system, allowing latent infections to grow.) But the country cannot tell which cases are susceptible to which antibiotics, meaning more dangerous strains could push out strains that are easier to kill, as has happened in Russia and Peru.
The project began after John W. Lewis, an expert on Chinese politics at Stanford participating in informal diplomatic talks over North Korea’s nuclear threat, realized how serious a TB problem the country had. In 2008, doctors from North Korea’s health ministry visited experts in the San Francisco Bay area. Last month, a Stanford team began installing the new diagnostics lab at a hospital in the capital, Pyongyang.
The project “represents an unprecedented level of cooperation” between North Korean and American doctors, Professor Lewis said. It is supported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit global security group led by former Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia, and by Christian Friends of Korea, a humanitarian group.
Although it will soon be able to grow and test TB strains, North Korea right now has none of the more expensive antibiotics that attack drug-resistant TB, said Sharon Perry, the epidemiologist leading the Stanford team. Without outside help it will also run out of routine first-line antibiotics by July, she said.
You can read the full article here:
Tuberculosis: North Korea Develops TB Laboratory With Help From American Doctors
New York Times
Donald McNeil, Jr.
3/1/2010
This is pretty sweet, because the NK government is willing to cooperate with the US to help North Koreans suffering from TB. Sadly, it looks like the teams behind all this may be facing some hardships in the near future due to lack of support, which is made evident in the last sentence of the article's final paragraph. I wonder if there's a way we can contribute, i.e. donations, which I think will be awesome. I attached links to the sites of the orgs that are supporting this endeavor, maybe we should look into seeing what we can do to help them, if not this semester then maybe for fall of 2010.
-J
