The findings of the report, which drew on the testimonies of more than 40 North Koreans as well as health professionals, paint a bleak picture of the Stalinist regime's so-called universal health care.
Norma Kang Muico, who is based in Seoul and is the author of the report, was told by several witnesses about surgeries performed without anaesthesia.
"We had one who had surgery for an appendix to be removed, another an amputation and they were all done without the aid of anaesthesia," she said.
"Some people even told me that when they had surgery with anaesthesia it wasn't enough to actually control the pain, so they were still in a lot of pain.
"[The hospitals] are very rundown, they're dilapidated. There's no electricity - if there is it's very sporadic.
"There's no heat in the winter time, there's no running water. The supplies are in short supply so if you've got say for example syringes, it's being re-used, sometimes with very little regard for hygiene. And sheets are not washed regularly and a lot of the cleaning responsibility falls on the patients' families."
When Australian National University (ANU) researcher Danielle Chubb visited North Korea on a study tour in 2007, government officials were keen to show her group the Pyong Yang maternity hospital.
"It was clearly something that they were very proud of and we were only shown into very certain parts of the hospital, even those parts seemed to a non-specialist in medical care, seemed very basic and there didn't seem to be a lot of medicines or a lot of equipment around," she said.Malnourishment
In the early 1990s up to a million North Koreans died of famine out of a population of 22 million.
North Korea remains at risk of serious malnourishment and the long-term food insecurity is a major factor in serious chronic health problems for millions of North Koreans.
A UNICEF report between 2003 and 2008 reported that 45 per cent of North Korean children under five were stunted.
Ms Muico says the health situation in the country is directly related to a lack of food.
"I have been living with food insecurity for nearly two decades; that has a serious impact on the health of the population and if they don't deal with the health issue right now, it is only going to get worse," she said.
North Korea claims it provides universal health care but the World Health Organisation's latest available figures show it spent less than $US1 per year per person on health.
from: www.mindfood.com/at-north-korea-health-care-bleak-report.seo
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