North Korea Healthcare

North Korea has an established national medical service and health insurance system.

Reports in 2000 suggest that 99 percent of the population had access to sanitation and 100 percent had access to water (however water was not always up to standards). Medical treatment is free. Reportedly there’s one doctor for every 700 people and one hospital bed for every 350 people.

Health expenditures in 2001 were 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, and 73 percent of health expenditures were made in the public sector. There were no reported human immuno-deficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) cases as of 2007. However, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 3 million people died from famine in the 1990s, and a 1998 United Nations (UN) World Food Program report revealed that 60 percent of children suffered from malnutrition, and 16 percent were acutely malnourished. UN statistics for the period 1999–2001 reveal that North Korea’s daily per capita food supply was one of the lowest in Asia, exceeding only that of Cambodia, Laos, and Tajikistan, and one of the lowest worldwide.

Because of continuing economic problems, food shortages and chronic malnutrition prevail in the 2000s.