North Korea fights off malaria as disease heads South

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has greatly reduced malaria infections at home but mosquitoes carrying the disease are crossing the heavily armed border and infecting hundreds each year in the South, a provincial governor said on Tuesday.

Malaria was eradicated on the Korean peninsula about 30 years ago but re-emerged in the destitute North in the 1990s due to poor sanitation.

Kim Moon-soo, governor of Gyeonggi province which surrounds Seoul and shares a border with North Korea, visited the communist state this month to discuss food aid and ways to keep malaria in check.

"Based on the statistics that we have access to, it seems that the malaria cases (in North Korea) have been significantly reduced," Kim said at a news briefing with foreign reporters.

Kim said there were about 60,000 civilian infections in North Korea in 2003 while in 2007 the number was reduced to an estimated 7,430.

In his province, 677 people were infected last year with malaria by mosquitoes that had crossed the no-man's land Demilitarized Zone buffer dividing the two countries technically still at war.

The infection rate in the province, though, has fallen since 2001 when several thousand people were infected, according to South Korean government statistics.

"The North has replied that it has no problem with malaria. They are reluctant to have this issue publicized. We also suffer from this issue and we have proposed to them to catch mosquitoes together," Kim said.

South Korea has worked with the World Health Organization since 2001, when an estimated 300,000 civilians were infected in the North, to eradicate malaria on the peninsula.

Seoul said earlier this month it would provide aid valued at $1.8 million to combat malaria in the North.

"Malaria in North Korea breaks out mostly around the border area," said an official with the South's Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kim, whose province conducts a joint farming project in the North, said he saw signs of a severe food shortage in the North.

"In North Korea, people are starving. They might not be starving to death but they are suffering due to the lack of proper nutrition and other difficulties."

Last month, the U.N. World Food Program said North Korea faced a looming food and humanitarian crisis after a poor harvest that has caused food prices to skyrocket and supplies to dwindle.

(Additional reporting by Park Ju-min; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)