For years, critics have demanded reform of the World Health Organization. Its management structure in particular is said to be archaic, its staff deeply demoralised. But, since WHO like other UN bodies, is accountable to no-one but itself, it dodders along unchanged. It is left to the ground staff of International Civil Servants to grapple with the real difficulties the ivory-tower academics pinpoint in long winded reports. The work of these International Civil Servants in distant lands among foreign cultures is often hazardous and lonely, and requires good management by those at the centre if it is to succeed. Instead, as this story shows, there is often lack of support and callous disregard which matters deeply because, if staff are as a result, unable to meet the extremely difficult challenges they face, no blast of grand talk at a conference, no high flying plan on plush paper, will save millions of dollars donated by the developed world from sinking like water into the sand. The individual human story related here reveals weaknesses in this great Organization which, multiplied over the region, help to explain why Africa remains the most disease-ridden continent on earth.
