J Korean Med Sci.  2024 Jan;39(4):e39. 10.3346/jkms.2024.39.e39.

Mid-Term Strategic Plan for the Public Health and Medical Care Cooperation in the Korean Peninsula

• Kim YS
• Noh JW
• Lee YH
• Kim SG

• KMID: 2551969
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2024.39.e39

Abstract

As extensive as the concept of and the resources required for ‘Health for Korean Unification’ are, and due to the limited access to information on the state of health and medical care in North Korea, discussion on ‘Health for Korean Unification’ has tended to be intermittent and lacked concrete action plans. In this article, we specifically distinguished areas of cooperation and selected five executable agenda that meet the goals of international development cooperation: 1) Health security; 2) Easing the burden of major diseases; 3) Resilient healthcare system; 4) R&D cooperation; 5) Sustainable cooperation system. Then we provided corresponding strategic priorities and operative directions, in consideration of future military and political sanctions against North Korea. The strategies we outline are sustainable, preemptive for problems that might affect lives of South and North Korean citizens, and satisfy the unmet needs of the North Korean health system. Throughout the process, we utilized a special platform, the ‘Korean Peninsula Healthcare Cooperation Platform,’ designed to enable continual communication across sectors engaged in public health and medical care. By doing so, we take the first step to actually carry out the 'Health for Korean Unification,’ which tended to have remained on the discussion agenda.

Keyword

Health for Korean Unification; Korean Peninsula Health Community; Public Health and Medical Care Cooperation; North Korea

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Linkage diagram of the five agendas with the WHO’s core values and six building blocks.WHO = World Health Organization, SDG = Sustainable Development Goal, UHC = universal health coverage, COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019.

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