District Doctor System

An advanced system for managing public health, the district doctor system helps to successfully carry out the Workers’ Party of Korea’s policy on preventive medicine. Under the system, doctors take in charge of families in a certain area and look after them on a regular basis. The system helps prevent diseases, immediately find out and treat a disease once it breaks out, thereby preventing the disease from developing. Under the system the doctors go among the families under their charge regularly to examine the family members’ health and hygienic state in detail and take scientific preventive measures.  

The Workers’ Party of Korea, at its Fourth Congress in 1961, defined the enforcement of the system as a major task of the public health sector and clarified the ways for its implementation in detail. The system has made it possible to provide the people, whether they live in remote mountainous regions, far-flung islets, miners’ villages, with medical services of doctors in charge of them. 

As the system was put in place, a well-regulated residents’ health care system was established whereby clinics take responsibility for the health of the residents under their charge. Under this health care system, people have their healthcare cards containing data about their health conditions from their birth and receive scientific medical treatment under the care of the doctors in charge of them.

Now the DPRK is dynamically working to bring preventive and curative medical care to the living and working space of the people, improve the quality of medical services and build up solid foundations for coping with any public health crisis.