SHOCKING: Doctor in Liberia Explains MILLIONS Wasted in Ebola Fight

Posted on | October 11, 2014 | 45 Comments

Dr. James Appel is a young Christian medical missionary working at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia. What he wrote last month about the situation there deserves to be read by everyone:

Liberia is losing the fight against Ebola because they are depending on NGOs and an influx of Western money instead of traditional ways of dealing with epidemics. The first few Ebola epidemics were in remote villages where the villages touched by Ebola were self-quarantined according to ancient traditions of dealing with plagues. No one went in and out, and the surrounding communities brought them food. The caregivers washed themselves and their clothes rapidly and frequently after each contact with the patient, just using simple soap and water. Very few ever got sick, and the disease was controlled in a few months.
Here in Liberia, everyone is excited about the millions of US dollars being poured in to “fight Ebola,” and everyone wants a piece of the pie. A certain NGO out in rural Liberia quarantined a village, claiming they’d tested and found three cases. They applied for and received US $250,000 to fight Ebola in this village. They brought in a few sacks of rice and some chlorine. The villagers mobbed the trucks and carried off the plunder. And, miracle of miracles, not a single person died in the village.
Great effort at treating and controlling Ebola? Or pretending there’s Ebola in order to pocket some easy cash? I’ve never heard of a 0% fatality rate for Ebola, but you make the call.
NGO’s spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to level earth with heavy equipment over a month in order to build tent cities capable of isolating and treating Ebola, but then not even giving them IV fluids or food, so that the Ebola patients sneak out of the tents and cross the street looking for food.
Dozens if not hundreds of US $70,000 Land Cruisers are taking foreigners around town to hotels, bars, clubs, and fancy guest houses so they can feel comfortable while they fight Ebola, and yet they can’t even collect the dead bodies that could expose so many more!
We’ve had bodies left for up to three days. Others have stayed in the open for up to five days before being collected. Patients are often turned away from the Ebola centers, and some have even refused to take anyone who doesn’t come in an ambulance. How many of the poor in West Point slum can afford an ambulance, even if there were enough available to take them? . . .

You need to read the whole thing, and send it to everyone you know, so they can read it, too. And please pray for Dr. Appel’s safety.

Category: Liberia

Comments

45 Responses to “SHOCKING: Doctor in Liberia Explains MILLIONS Wasted in Ebola Fight”

Political Rift » SHOCKING: Doctor in Liberia Explains MILLIONS Wasted in Ebola Fight
October 11th, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

[…] Read more here: SHOCKING: Doctor in Liberia Explains MILLIONS Wasted in Ebola Fight […]
alice_tx
October 11th, 2014 @ 5:14 pm

Got to this via twitter. Thanks for posting this info and the link to Adventist Today. I can keep up better now.

If a documentary were made about NGOs (or foreign ‘GOs’ for that matter) in Africa ‘fighting’ Ebola and it were cut skillfully, it could become extreme comedy noir. You’d cry and then laugh. It could drive you crazy, but the crying would win out.
Adobe_Walls
October 11th, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

This is how bureaucracies solve problems. They spend a lot of money studying the problem. Then no matter what solutions are offered by those who may actually know something about the problem they opt for plan B. Plan B is always the same. Create a ring of catapults around the problem and load bags of gold……. well you get the idea.
Given that bureaucracies can’t tell the difference between real problems and imaginary problems let alone between real workable solutions and unworkable solutions it’s a wonder that any of the money spent does any good at all.
RS
October 11th, 2014 @ 5:35 pm

But remember: It’s very disturbing that so many of the doctors and health care professionals actually doing something for real people are–gasps of outrage—Christian Missionaries.

Oh, the horror!
RKae
October 11th, 2014 @ 6:04 pm

I heard about such scams involved with the AIDS plague in Africa. You have a cough, you go to a hospital or clinic, they say, “You have TB, and we’re just going to check this box called ‘AIDS complications,’ so we can get some American money.” So the numbers of AIDS patients got wildly inflated, which was “too good to investigate” for the Hollywood stars who wanted to “care deeply” about a plague in the 3rd World and scream that “we’re not doing enough.”
RKae
October 11th, 2014 @ 6:06 pm

Bags of gold? IF ONLY! No, if it was gold then we might notice that we’re spending it. Unfortunately, it’s bags of debt.
RKae
October 11th, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

Yeah, those Christian missionaries, who (any good leftist will tell you) are worse than Islamic terrorists.

‘Cause, y’know, providing sanitation and care, then saying “Oh, and here’s a Bible, too,” is exactly the same as decapitating infidels.
JeffWeimer
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:04 pm

Or evil Capitalist Plantationists!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks

The Horror!
JeffWeimer
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:07 pm

They do that “administrative diagnosis” in schools *here* in America with Autism. There’s a lot of money in Autism and anything that can be diagnosed on the “spectrum” means money for treatment.

Ask me how I know.
dwduck
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:11 pm

I can’t find it offhand, but there is (or was) a blog written by a disgrunted UN aid worker touching on a lot of these points. The fleets of chauffeured Land Cruisers were a frequent topic.
DeadMessenger
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:48 pm

“Thank you so much for nursing me back to health, and for the indoor toilets and wells you built for my family. And yes, I’d love to read your Bibl……*gak*……thump.

Yes, Christianity = Islam.
DeadMessenger
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:49 pm

Since you said that, now I want to know how you know.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
October 11th, 2014 @ 7:50 pm

Cargo Cult via Congo (or Liberia). Now imagine if the village really has Ebola and the “cargo” comes in and the resulting mob. Hmmmm, what could go wrong with that scenario?

You have essentially baited the village to get infected.
JeffWeimer
October 11th, 2014 @ 8:03 pm

My youngest has Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum (ACC), a birth defect where the two hemispheres of her brain don’t talk to each other. She’s not Autistic, but some of her related ACC symptoms are on the Autistic “spectrum” – that is, they are similar. In order to get treatment in school for her learning difficulties, we had to have her diagnosed as on the spectrum or else the school couldn’t help with special educational help.

It’s a “color of money” thing – Smitty’s familiar from his experience in the Military Complex :). No matter how disabled, but not Autistic – no money. Nearly fully functional but “diagnosed” on the “spectrum”? – What can we do for you?
Isaac T
October 11th, 2014 @ 8:18 pm

So you mean just throwing money at a problem doesn’t tend to solve the problem?
Adobe_Walls
October 11th, 2014 @ 8:53 pm

Don’t be so sure. Nobody seemed to have noticed that all of Germany’s gold reserves disappeared from the Fed’s vaults until the Germans asked for them.
DeadMessenger
October 11th, 2014 @ 9:45 pm

I’m sorry your daughter has this disorder, and I hope they help her.

My son had a series of grand mal seizures caused by a chemical leak at his school (a fact that we didn’t learn until several years later). The first year afterward, he needed speech and physical therapy, and he was also unnecessarily placed in a class for the educable mentally retarded. (It’s all about the funding, can you dig it?) once in there, they refused to let him out, even after he was independently tested. In this class, he learned nothing, because they taught nothing, but came home injured every single day. This led to me pulling him out and homeschooling him and my daughter. That was the silver lining, it turns out.
aliswell
October 11th, 2014 @ 9:49 pm

Similar to all those countless millions that poured into Haiti after that earthquake. Where did the money all go? Very little actually aided anybody, and today the place is still a wreck.
DeadMessenger
October 11th, 2014 @ 10:09 pm

Maybe we should start an “organization” and register it as an NGO. We can take big mouthfuls of ketchup and spit it up all over ourselves, then apply for funding to “help provide assistance” for us. We’ll luckily manage to survive, then split the money as “administrative costs”.

I think it works something like that.
DeadMessenger
October 11th, 2014 @ 10:10 pm

“No accountability” is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?
EtoculusDei
October 11th, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

My brother works in Africa. He once told me that if you had a million dollars and wanted to help the people in Africa you should just give it to anyone you meet on the streets in America. It would have just as much a chance of actually helping an African that way as it does when you give it to their governments.
Adobe_Walls
October 12th, 2014 @ 12:16 am

Unfortunately for Haiti it is far to late for Haiti to stop being Haiti.
K-Bob
October 12th, 2014 @ 12:17 am

The vision of the anointed. It’s like a recursive function.
William T Quick
October 12th, 2014 @ 1:39 am

Is it time to cite, once again, Kim du Toit’s “Let Africa Sink?” I think it is: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/924795/posts

You’re welcome.
Jason Lee
October 12th, 2014 @ 3:15 am

Went to school with the Appels. Good family.
DeadMessenger
October 12th, 2014 @ 4:28 am

From what I understand, the Africans say that, too.
DeadMessenger
October 12th, 2014 @ 4:29 am

Is that the sort of function that makes you want to curse? That seems to be happening to me a lot lately.
RS
October 12th, 2014 @ 8:56 am

A European relative was in charge of his country’s aid efforts during the Ethiopian famine. He spent 18 months in Addis Ababa. Eventually, he advised his country to shut down the program. None of the millions of dollars in in-kind aid was getting to the starving people. Rather, it was being seized by the government and either resold to fund the leaders’ lavish lifestyles or traded to the Soviets for weapons to fight various rebel groups. He told me later, “we could give them half our GDP and people would still starve. Better to keep our money, since people are going to starve anyway.”

I intuitively figured this sort of the thing was BS when I was six and the UN tried to coopt me into raising money for Biafra at Halloween instead asking for candy.
darleenclick
October 12th, 2014 @ 1:20 pm

But but but … SOCIAL JUSTICE!!!
Quartermaster
October 12th, 2014 @ 3:20 pm

I remember Biafra. I was living in Germany at the time, and someone tried to get us MilBrat school kids to raise money for Biafra relief. Some Colonel told them “fuggedaboudit” because the Nigerians will never let it in, and what little got there would be wasted.

The good Colonel was correct, and nothing has changed.
Quartermaster
October 12th, 2014 @ 3:21 pm

Yeah, that too.
K-Bob
October 12th, 2014 @ 5:29 pm

Yes! You want to curse, but in the middle of cursing, they do something else curse-worthy, so you have to go curse at that first, then get back to the original curse.
Geosystem
October 12th, 2014 @ 5:59 pm

This was a massive epidemic in the early 80s. Rather than get help for kids who were falling behind or had some emotional adjustment issues, the schools slapped the “special needs” sticker on them and shuffled them off to special classes and schools for some of those sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars. It really screwed up the education of a lot of kids in the system and had a significant financial incentive not to let them out of it.
K-Bob
October 12th, 2014 @ 8:00 pm

Hah! We used to see those stupid, Pennies for UNICEF containers lying in the dirt while out Trick-Or-Treating.

Most kids knew that as a bad deal immediateley.
K-Bob
October 12th, 2014 @ 8:04 pm

Sinkholes are found in many of those islands.

That’s where the money goes.
DeadMessenger
October 12th, 2014 @ 11:03 pm

That’s how it works in the programming field, too, come to think of it. I plan to share your definition with my new employees so they know what to expect. Good life training, I figure.
DeadMessenger
October 12th, 2014 @ 11:06 pm

That’s exactly it.
K-Bob
October 13th, 2014 @ 1:17 am

When you see us going “Aw, sh-shi-sh-shi-sh-s-shi-shi-t-t-hit-it-t-it-t-it!” that’s what’s happening.
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October 15th, 2014 @ 3:56 pm

[…] Christian medical missionary working at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, recently made the same point John Hayward made about the detrimental effects of too much money being thrown at a […]
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October 15th, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

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October 15th, 2014 @ 4:06 pm

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October 15th, 2014 @ 4:08 pm

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[…] Christian medical missionary working at a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, recently made the same point John Hayward made about the detrimental effects of too much money being thrown at a […]
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