By Walid Shoebat
While democrats accuse republicans of politicizing Ebola, the World Health Organization (WHO) has admitted it botched attempts to stop the now-spiraling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including “incompetent staff”, “lack of information”, “politics”, and “bureaucracy”, elements for disaster that are not foreign to the Obama Administration here in the U.S. In fact, President Obama had a solution to Ebola: he has named an Ebola czar: Ron Klain even though the White House noted that “the job title ‘czar’ doesn’t exist”. Klain is a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Al Gore who was played by Kevin Spacey in the 2008 movie “Recount.” Though Klain does not have any health care experience, he has experience on Capitol Hill working closely with the funds in the 2008 Stimulus Act.
Obama’s doofus, the Ebola czar Ron Klain
Democrats are brushing-off the threat of Ebola just as the World Health Organization (WHO) did, but now after the snow melted the embarrassing facts finally were revealed today when a draft internal document, the agency wrote that experts should have realized that traditional infectious disease containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.
“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” WHO said in the document.
Even Dr. Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, agreed yesterday WHO acted far too slowly, largely because of its Africa office questioning why it took WHO five months and 1,000 deaths before the agency declared Ebola an international health emergency in August.
With the world playing catch-up in trying to contain the crisis, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday a trust fund he launched to provide fast and flexible funding for the fight against Ebola has only US$100,000 in the bank and UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the trust fund was part of a nearly US$1 billion UN appeal for humanitarian needs in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
As a result of the botch, Western countries scrambled Friday to ward off a feared global spread of Ebola.
WHO admitted that the two factors, which caused the botch (which are not foreign to the Obama Administration): “politics” and “bureaucracy”. The U.N. health agency acknowledged that, at times, even its own bureaucracy was a problem. It noted that the heads of WHO country offices in Africa are “politically motivated appointments” made by the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Luis Sambo, who does not answer to the agency’s chief in Geneva, Dr. Margaret Chan.
WHO is the U.N.’s specialized health agency, responsible for setting global health standards and coordinating the global response to disease outbreaks.
Piot agreed in an interview Friday that WHO acted far too slowly, largely because of its Africa office.
“It’s the regional office in Africa that’s the front line,” Piot said at his office in London.
“And they didn’t do anything. That office is really not competent.”
“In fact when you look at the evolution of the crisis, the international community really woke up when the disease got to America and Europe,” the Ghanaian told the BBC.
As far as hiring a czar to conquer Ebola, the record on czars is clear.
“There’ve been so many czars over the last 50 years, and they’ve all been failures,” New York University public-service professor Paul Light told “The Wall Street Journal” in 2008. “It’s a symbolic gesture of the priority assigned to an issue.”
Klain has managed lots of money, but his experience when it comes to matters of public health is unclear. Biden, however, is optimistic about his former chief of staff’s leadership, he tweeted “There’s no one better at getting govt to work at its best than Ron Klain. He’s a tested manager & problem-solver, and a trusted advisor. -vp”
Hip-hip-hurray the czar will save us!
SOURCES
Associated Press