E-DRUG: Drug shortage feared as Uganda govt, WHO haggle over supplier (2)
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Dear Colleagues
I am very pleased to see this article ... and thank you for putting
this into circulation.
What is disconcerting is that the article leaves one with a serious
set of questions about who to trust. From my experience, every single
organization referred to in the article suffers from a credibility
problem ... I do not trust any of them: Crown Agents, Government of
Kenya, Government of Uganda, an Indian manufacturer, the WHO, the
GFATM, the press! I have had bad experience ... or know of bad things
... about every one of these organizations.
At the same time, I also know that many ... probably most ... of the
people working in these various organizations are honest, reputable,
hard working people, and they should not be tainted by a broad concern
and lack of trust about the performance, reputation, reliability and
honesty of the organizations as a whole.
Sadly, it seems that the modern system of global everything has gotten
out of control. There are huge profits being made in a lot of the
wrong places ... and high quality responsible enterprise gets too
little reward ... and poor people in need get to suffer way more than
they should.
What does someone do when one sees something is wrong? It should be
easy to get what is wrong identified and fixed ... but this hardly
ever happens. People get away with small wrongs ... and then this
escalates to bigger wrongs. Eventually the economy falls apart and
only bad big profitable transactions remain ... that do no good for
anyone ... except a powerful elite who get to dominate everything.
The system of law ... rule of law ... serves just as often to protect
the guilty as to protect the innocent. People can break the law with
impunity as long as the rules make it impossible to prove that the
perpetrators are guilty ... often very difficult because the
documentation of financial transactions is usually located in very
secure very private places. Very few of the details of economic
transactions are open to public scrutiny even where there are
government transparency rules.
A market economy works very well when there are thousands of suppliers
and thousands of buyers ... but turns into a monster when there is
excessive concentration of economic power. Both the private sector and
the government sector are potential sources of economic concentration
... and in combination the stage is set for a horrible outcome.
At this stage in world history ... is there anyone ... any
organization ... to be trusted?
Am I missing something? Or just getting old and disgruntled?
Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net Inc ...
The Transparency and Accountability Network
Community Analytics (CA)
Integrated Malaria Management (IMM)
Microfinance Focus Magazine in New York
website: www.tr-ac-net.org
tel: 917 432 1191 or 212 772 6918
email: peterbnyc@gmail.com
skype: peterburgessnyc