Amputations without anesthesia in NKorea

[froggy]

Report: Amputations without anesthesia in NKorea - Yahoo! News


A 24-year-old defector from northeastern Hamkyong province told Amnesty that a doctor amputated his left leg from the calf down without anesthesia after his ankle was crushed by a moving train when he fell from one of the cars.

"Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain," said the man, identified only by his family name, Hwang. "I woke up one week later in a hospital bed."

 

[caela]

Report: Amputations without anesthesia in NKorea - Yahoo! News


A 24-year-old defector from northeastern Hamkyong province told Amnesty that a doctor amputated his left leg from the calf down without anesthesia after his ankle was crushed by a moving train when he fell from one of the cars.

"Five medical assistants held my arms and legs down to keep me from moving. I was in so much pain that I screamed and eventually fainted from pain," said the man, identified only by his family name, Hwang. "I woke up one week later in a hospital bed."

I work in surgery and all I can say is, that if it's true, that's terrible! We do amputations and they are bloody, terrible things! Cutting through all that tissue and bone with no anesthesia would be nothing short of torture!

 

[Baruch Menachem]

The people of North Korea do the best they can with what they got.

The government is nuts.
from wiki

Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea. The Korean People's Army (KPA) is the name for the collective armed personnel of the North Korean military. The army has four branches: Ground Force, Naval Force, Air Force, and the Artillery Guidance Bureau. According to the U.S. Department of State, North Korea has the fifth-largest army in the world, at an estimated 1.21 million armed personnel, with about 20% of men aged 17–54 in the regular armed forces.[66]

North Korea has the highest percentage of military personnel per capita of any nation in the world, with approximately 1 enlisted soldier for every 25 citizens.[67] Military strategy is designed for insertion of agents and sabotage behind enemy lines in wartime,[66] with much of the KPA's forces deployed along the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone. The Korean People's Army operates a very large amount of equipment, including 4,060 tanks, 2,500 APCs, 17,900 artillery pieces (incl. mortars), 11,000 air defence guns in the Ground force; at least 915 vessels in the Navy and 1,748 aircraft in the Air Force,[68] as well as some 10,000 MANPADS and anti-tank guided missiles.[69] The equipment is a mixture of World War II vintage vehicles and small arms, widely proliferated Cold War technology, and more modern Soviet weapons. According to official North Korean media, planned military expenditures for 2009 are 15.8% of GDP.[70]

By contrast, the US with 10 times the population has 1.4 million active service folks.

 

[Madeline]

It's hard to believe anyone could survive such a thing.

 

[boedicca]

They have Single Payer Health Care in North Korea. Berwick would approve.

 

[xotoxi]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100715...DeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDcmVwb3J0YW1wdXRh
A 24-year-old defector from northeastern Hamkyong province told Amnesty that a doctor amputated his...Hwang.

OOH! That's gotta hurt.

 

[caela]

It's hard to believe anyone could survive such a thing.

Not really. Painful as hell, torturous, absolutely. But a quickly, done amputation wouldn't be that hard to survive even with no anesthesia. My question would be what other conditions it was done under and what the likelihood of infection is there. Barring a post-op infection he really should end up all right but damn I wouldn't wish that sort of Civil War era doctoring on my worst enemy!

 

[sparky]

So is this a 'we're so much better than those 3rd world sh*tholes' the point here?

high 5's all around?