The ultimate big government is world government - the United Nations and other non-governmental bodies. Corrupt and inefficient at the very best.
Nothing shows it up like a good crisis - in this case, the Ebola outbreak. From Terence Corcoran writing at Financial Post:
Terence Corcoran: WHO battles climate and sugar, misses Ebola
Countless bazillions have been spent over decades by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Bank to save the world from climate change, tobacco, sugar, fast foods and poverty, but when a real-life health crisis lands the great global collective of do-gooding bureaucracies has failed miserably. The World Health Organization, mostly silent on Ebola until six months ago, has now plastered its Web side with Ebola wallpaper. The UN and World Bank are also now rushing to cover their positions despite their obvious inability to respond to the crisis.
If the WHO is good at anything, it’s distributing advocacy wordage by the tonne, the kind of stuff nobody can eat or use to save a life. On August 28, months after the initial Ebola outbreak, the WHO produced an “Ebola Response Roadmap,” a 20-page document filled with bureaucratic wheeze. The WHO would, for example, “assist in delineating existing response needs and encourage partners to provide the needed resources to meet such needs.”
Last week the WHO produced another report on what countries not yet hit with Ebola should do. Sample:
Building on national and international existing preparedness efforts, a set of tools is being developed to help any country to intensify and accelerate their readiness. One of these tools is a comprehensive checklist of core principles, standards, capacities and practices, which all countries should have or meet. The checklist can be used by countries to assess their level of preparedness, guide their efforts to strengthen themselves and to request assistance. Items on the checklist include infection prevention control, contact tracing, case management, surveillance, laboratory capacity, safe burial, public awareness and community engagement and national legislation and regulation to support country readiness.
Thousands could die before any of this (whatever it is) happens. At a news conference Tuesday, a WHO official announced that West Africa will be enduring 5,000 to 10,000 new cases of Ebola every week by the end of next month. But it seems a little late for the WHO — with an annual budget of $4-billion — to be sounding alarms on a crisis that should have been right at the top of its response list six months ago.
The World Health Organization website is here. Listed on the site is news of an outbreak of Marburg in Uganda - this is just as bad as Ebola and it is just developing.
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