Opinion

Projects have now been undertaken in many parts of the country to improve their public health conditions and environment.

It is an urgent task to better the local public health conditions and environment as well as the central ones, especially at present when the world health crisis lingers.

The Fifth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea stressed as an important issue again the need to continue to push ahead with the modernization of provincial general hospitals and city and county hospitals.

General Secretary Kim Jong Un said that for our Party, which embodies the people-first principle as its nature and sacred political ideal, to protect and improve the people’s health is the most urgent priority it should shoulder and implement for sure irrespective of whether the conditions are favourable or unfavourable and the most honourable revolutionary affair.

It is the firm decision and will of our Party to ensure all our people and rising generations are in good health, always enjoying the most advanced medical service under the care of the socialist health system.

The matter of utmost importance in focusing on improving the local public health conditions and environment is to direct steady efforts to strengthening the material and technical foundations of the public health sector, I think. 

In upgrading the medical service institutions primary attention should be paid to sprucing up the lowest units, including the hospitals and ri clinics in places where the people are concentrated or far from big hospitals, especially industrial cities and mountainous counties, and providing them with good medical appliances so that timely treatment can be given to emergency cases and more people receive proper medical assistance.

It is important to keep closer ties between the central- and provincial-level hospitals to ensure the already-established medical service systems like emergency medical service and telemedicine systems work more effectively.

Another issue to be focused on in improving the local health conditions and environment is to build up the ranks of health workers.

Education should be intensified to encourage them all to put their heart and soul into medical treatment with warm love for and great devotion to the people.

At the same time, constant effort should be directed to improving the medial qualifications of medical workers to train many excellent doctors.

It is also needed to promote the development of traditional Koryo medicine by relying on locally available medicinal materials.