North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is quietly accepting aid from an American NGO to tackle his country's spiraling tuberculosis crisis, despite his threats to "burn Manhattan down to the ashes" and "destroy the entire US territory" with a nuclear strike, the Telegraph has learned.

The Eugene Bell Foundation, which combats drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), has delivered its first package to the secretive regime since it carried out its fourth nuclear test in January.

And despite Kim's all-consuming hatred for America, the Washington-based group said it had no trouble transporting the medicine.

"Despite the ongoing tensions surrounding the Korean peninsula this year, we are happy to announce that our spring shipment of medications and supplies for our multidrug-resistant treatment program have arrived in North Korea," aid workers said in a "special announcement" seen by the Telegraph.

"We would like to extend a special thanks to all those who have helped make this possible," they added.

Though TB has mostly disappeared from the developed world, it remains a major public health risk in North Korea, where a drug-resistant strain of the disease has emerged.

Dr Stephen Linton, the Eugene Bell Foundation's founder, told the Telegraph they felt compelled to step in after South Korea cut humanitarian aid to the North in January.

"Unless something is done quickly, our patients will fail treatment and die," he said.

Linton said the lives of at least 1,500 TB patients were at risk because Seoul did not make humanitarian aid an exception to the latest sanctions imposed on North Korea for its nuclear program.

The Foundation said it has since "quietly campaigned" to convince the South to release three containers of tuberculosis medicine.

"Despite chronic tensions and occasional military clashes, with permission from the current and three previous South Korean administrations, for two decades Eugene Bell has provided a dependable supply of South Korean TB medications to TB sufferers in the north," a spokesman said.

Source : MENA