North Korea has eliminated the rubella virus, which can cause serious birth defects, after carrying out a wide-ranging childhood immunization campaign, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced.

The DPRK introduced the measles-rubella vaccine “into standard childhood immunization programs” in Nov. 2019 following an earlier campaign that successfully targeted nine month to 15-year-old children and 16 to 18-year-old women, the WHO said in a statement.

The mass immunizations have now inoculated more than 99.8 percent of the targeted population of some 6 million and “eliminated” the virus from North Korea, according to the U.N. health agency.

“These achievements will