Update at 1100 KST on 03/31: This article has been updated to include further details provided by the MSF spokesperson.
Medical supplies provided by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) intended for assisting North Korea in dealing with a potential outbreak of the COVID-19 virus recently arrived in the country, the organizations confirmed on Monday.
“The full cargo of medical supplies donated by MSF — including masks, gloves, goggles, hand hygiene products, and antibiotics – have now arrived in DPRK,” a spokesperson for MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, told NK News.
The NGO was “advised by the DPRK authorities that the cargo left Dandong to Pyongyang on the morning of the 28th of March,” they added.
“They arrived in Pyongyang on the 30th,” the spokesperson explained. “They traveled by air from Europe to China, then [by] land from China to the DPRK.”
MSF was granted a UN sanctions exemption to send PPE and diagnostic equipment to North Korea in February, with a spokesperson late last week telling NK News that all supplies had arrived in Dandong, China, but were yet to cross into the DPRK.
The first MSF cargo arrived earlier in Beijing on March 5, they said, implying that the delivery was subsequently delayed for more than 20 days.
The UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office on Monday also reported that their delivery was made last week through the DPRK-China border.
“The supplies of PPE equipment, plus gloves, masks — both surgical and N95 — and infra-red thermometers” have arrived in North Korea “and will be sent to the Ministry of Public Health in Pyongyang,” Shima Islam of the agency’s regional office said in an email to NK News.
“They arrived last week by land from China.”
UNICEF told NK News earlier this month that it expected to see the PPE shipped to North Korea by the end of the third week of March, with its arrival last week suggesting the UN agency also experienced a delay in delivering the items.
The agency’s spokesperson did not comment on the reasons for the delay, and would not say whether the UNICEF cargo will be required to go through additional quarantine examination procedures once it arrives in the DPRK.
News of the shipments’ safe arrival in the DPRK represents the first such delivery of coronavirus-related aid in the past month by international organizations and NGOs, following weeks of apparent delays at the DPRK-China border.
North Korean state media has reported that cargo entering the DPRK “through the border and the ports” must be quarantined and isolated for ten days before being allowed into the country — rules that will also likely apply to the UNICEF and MSF supplies.
The news also comes over a month after initial reports suggested that UNICEF, working with the World Health Organization (WHO), had been asked by North Korea’s Ministry of Public Health to provide COVID-19 related PPE.
While the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) also received an exemption from international sanctions in late February to ship COVID-19-related equipment into the DPRK, it remains unclear if their cargo made it into the country.
Also recently granted permission to bring otherwise sanctioned goods into North Korea was Swiss Humanitarian Aid, which won approval last week to “support ongoing measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
But the repatriation of that organization’s staff alongside other foreign officials earlier in the month will mean that that shipment will not go ahead for the time being, a spokesperson for the organization told NK News on Monday.
“The delivery of the material is… suspended until adequate presence and monitoring arrangements can be reestablished,” they said.
North Korea has consistently insisted that it remains a “clean land” free from the virus, and has touted its alleged successes in stemming a potential outbreak.
Additional reporting by Jacob Fromer
Edited by Oliver Hotham
Update at 1100 KST on 03/31: This article has been updated to include further details provided by the MSF spokesperson.
Medical supplies provided by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) intended for assisting North Korea in dealing with a potential outbreak of the COVID-19 virus recently arrived in the country, the organizations confirmed on Monday.
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