Policy

WHO Chief Announces the Good News: "No Signs of Obesity" in North Korea!

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The latest round of commie spooning from a dimwitted international bureaucrat:

North Korea's health system would be the envy of many developing countries because of the abundance of medical staff that it has available, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, speaking a day after returning from a 2-1/2 day visit to the reclusive country, said malnutrition was a problem in North Korea but she had not seen any obvious signs of it in the capital Pyongyang.

North Korea—which does not allow its citizens to leave the country—has no shortage of doctors and nurses, in contrast to other developing countries where skilledhealthcare workers often emigrate, she said.

This allows North Korea to provide comprehensive healthcare, with one "household doctor" looking after every 130 families, said the head of the United Nations health agency, praising North Korea's immunization coverage and mother and child care.

"They have something which most other developing countries would envy," Chan told a news conference, noting that her visit was a rare sign of the communist state's willingness to cooperate with outside agencies.

The three-year North Korean famine that killed about 3 million people in the 1990s gets all of a four-word mention in the Reuters write-up of Chan's remarks. But, you know, massive-famine-that-killed-12-percent-of-the-population aside, Chan notes, North Korea has none of that filthy excess we see in countries whose citizens aren't considered the property of the state:

Chan spent most of her brief visit in Pyongyang, and she said that from what she had seen there most people had the same height and weight as Asians in other countries, while there were no signs of the obesity emerging in some parts of Asia.

But she said conditions could be different in the countryside.

Well thank goodness North Koreans aren't getting fat. Good to know the WHO has its priorities in order.

In other news about clueless international organizations, the latest member of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women will be . . . Iran. You may remember Iran from such hits as "7 Iranianan Women Face Stoning Death for Adultery," "Iranian Authorities Continue to Harass Activists Working for Women's Rights," and last summer's #1 YouTube smash, "The Murder of Neda Agha-Soltan."