Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Visits Pyongyang General Hospital Nearing Inauguration

Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, visited the Pyongyang General Hospital nearing its inauguration on September 23.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un was accompanied by Jo Yong Won, secretary of the Central Committee of the WPK, Ju Chang Il, Kim Jae Ryong and Kim Yong Su, department directors of the Central Committee of the WPK, and officials in the field of public health.

He was greeted on the spot by leading members of the hospital and construction and design units.

He went round various places of the hospital including the image diagnosis department, emergency department, general experimental test department, specialized treatment departments such as dental department and internal intensive treatment department, general operating room, inpatient ward, conference hall and helipad.

Saying that we have paid deep attention to ensuring that architectural aspects, ranging from design to all spatial environments, in hospital construction can be beneficial to the treatment of the physical and mental health of people, he noted that it is important to provide the patients with mentally and psychologically stable environment and conditions for treatment as treatment and recuperation are main in the hospital. He appreciated that the interior and exterior of the hospital are unique and refined in the architectural aspect and various colors are well combined with in a way to raise the visibility and formative beauty, thus giving modern and comfortable feelings.

Learning in detail about the interior finish of the hospital and preparations for medical service, he said that the primary attention has been paid to ensuring the smooth medical treatment plan, ranging from the layout of facilities and composition of space to the flow relation and the plane structure of individual rooms, and it is a great development made in our design field. He made a satisfactory appreciation of the fact that the functionality and specialization level of the hospital are high and the spatial and functional connectivity is ensured wonderfully.

The hospital facilities and treatment equipment should be good, but the important thing is the forces for medical service, he said, adding that as there is a saying that the treatment hinges on medicine and mind, the main thing in the treatment is the high level of medical practices and sincerity of a doctor in charge of a patient. He gave an instruction to make all the medical workers and nurses well prepared to devote their all to the treatment with warm human love as well as professional qualifications.

Saying that three modern city and county hospitals are to be inaugurated at the end of this year and the beginning of the next year and 20 regional hospitals to be built every year from next year, pursuant to the Party's policy on regional development, he stressed that Pyongyang General Hospital should play a key and leading role for sure in implementing the Party's policy on healthcare revolution intended to rebuild and dramatically develop the country's public health on an advanced basis.

He clarified a series of important tasks such as the issues of renewing some architectural styles in future hospital design, working out the detailed one for every element according to the long-term development plan and exactly predicting and reflecting the future demands and changes in it.

He said that it is needed to build an advanced and efficient digital medical service network and medical treatment system in city and county hospitals like Pyongyang General Hospital which put the whole course of its management and medical service on an IT and intellectual basis. He noted it is important to establish a nationwide public health and medical service infrastructure comprising central hospitals and provincial, city and county hospitals as well as individual families.

He added that we would study a series of important issues for further strengthening the foundations of the country's public health including the issue of setting up such essential medical treatment organs as emergency stations between city and county hospitals and ri clinics according to the population density and geographical and traffic conditions under the supervision of the relevant policy-oriented guidance department of the Party Central Committee in the future.

He referred to the complicated problems occurred in the course of the construction of Pyongyang General Hospital since the day of its groundbreaking ceremony.

He said that the main reason why its construction was delayed compared to the others was disorder in organizing the economic work due to the desire for fame sought by some leading officials of the then Cabinet and the officials of the then coordination commission for the construction of Pyongyang General Hospital, which resulted in the creation of the artificial obstacle inside the country, even though it was affected by the objective factor caused by the global health crisis.

He noted that, in those days, they pushed ahead with the construction at their own discretion without the approval of the total budget for construction reflecting the hospital scale and the change in design while neglecting the financial discipline of the state, and thus brought economic losses. The more serious problem was that they set up even an organization in the form of aid panel at will and conducted the campaign of fund-raising and aid across the country, he said, adding that it was led to a serious political problem of distorting the original intention of the Party, which initiated a glorious and worthwhile project for the people with sincerity in order to realize its cherished desire.

He said that the people-oriented character of this work initiated by our Party was almost to be misled and the prestige of the Party undermined due to the politically very immature people who failed to discern the purpose and character of this construction plan which the Party designated as its cherished desire and the fame-seekers who thought of being praised for their share by poking their noses in the construction to which the Party pays direct attention and gives importance. Among the officials who had done such an unreasonable act at that time were former senior officials of the Organizational Leadership Department of the Party Central Committee, who were politically responsible for the construction coordination commission, he said, adding that in order to recover the political loss caused by the fame-seeking individual officials who regarded their names more important than the Party's policy, we had to take a special measure inevitably and separately to pay all the funds back in December last year to the units and residents who offered aid funds to the construction of the hospital.

He said that the wrong practices and complications revealed in the course of the hospital construction resulted in its delay for one and a half years and this is a simple example showing the undisciplined practices in economic work, subjective desire of officials and their immaturity in political guidance still latent in the state. It presented the necessity to further increase the political preparedness of leading officials of the Party and government and gave a serious lesson related to the vacuum in our work, he added.

Saying that the political significance and innovative might of the construction are incomparably increasing in the course of our struggle to advance from a revolution to a more gigantic one and from a stage of development to a higher level of transformation, he stressed we should bear in mind that however difficult and hard it may be at present, every edifice created by dint of self-reliance should be the precious wealth of happy and comfortable life for our people and posterity and a substantial asset for the national development.

Noting that hospital, a functional building which requires highly strict and specialization level compared to any other fields, can be called an aggregation of architectural technology, he indicated in detail the ways for eliminating shortcomings revealed in the construction of the general hospital and its preparations for medical service.

He said that we should develop designs of public health facilities before anything else in order to put the country's public health sector, which was lagging behind the other fields, on the level of the world. To this end, organizing the design institute specializing in the architectural designs, ranging from the central hospitals to the city and county hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, presents itself as a primary issue, he said and indicated organizational and structural measures for it.

Expressing his pleasure of greeting the day when the one of the cherished desires is to be realized in the long run, he said with pride that the foundations of country's public health will experience fundamental change if modern hospitals rise up in over 200 cities and counties across the country in the future and Pyongyang General Hospital will be splendidly recorded in the history of the new era of the country's construction as a monumental entity symbolic of the first year of the healthcare revolution led by our Party and the first substantial starting point of the public health rejuvenation.

Noting that Pyongyang General Hospital is a present our Party gives to the people on the occasion of its founding day, he gave detailed instructions related to its inaugural ceremony.