Humanitarian aid to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in North Korea, initiated by the Eugene Bell Foundation, is stuck amid the ongoing tension between Pyongyang and Seoul since February.

Because the South Korean government didn’t provide an exception for humanitarian aid in its most recent sanctions on North Korea, more than 1,500 patients in the North are now at risk, the foundation said in a press release dated March 9. The foundation called for rapid approval to send its medicine to North Korea.

In the document, the foundation’s founder and chairman Stephen W. Linton said their 12 treatment centers in the