SCANDAL: In Pakistan United Nations charge 75% for every $$Dollar that supposedly goes to procure Polio Vaccines

THE BARE TRUTH 

Where is ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT BANK $LOAN$ for POLIO eradication goes in Pakistan ?

Click here to read this in full @ International Herald Tribune: http://tribune.com.pk/story/472026/operational-costs-weigh-heavily-on-anti-polio-push/

Operational costs weigh heavily on anti-polio push

By Shahbaz Rana

Published: November 28, 2012

Official documents show that more than 50% of the total programme cost will go to two foreign organisations – WHO and Unicef. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: 
Running a polio eradication initiative is no mean feat. Within its massive head, only about one-third goes into the actual procurement of vaccines.

That’s the easy part.
The rest is be provided to two United Nations agencies and a govt body as ‘operational costs’ – ie, the cost of surveying the areas and millions of households to be targeted across Pakistan and then actually delivering the medicines to the millions of households over a span of three years.
In Pakistan, two international agencies will be paid the largest chunk to undertake this process.
The polio vaccine procurement cost of the three-year Emergency Plan for Polio Eradication stands at $106.6 million, or Rs9.7 billion – 35% of the total Rs27.5 billion earmarked for the recently cleared three-year campaign programme – which seeks to eliminate polio by 2015.
Official documents show that more than 50% of the total programme cost will go to two foreign organisations – the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is responsible for operations and surveillance, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), responsible for vaccine procurement and communication.

WHO will have the larger share of the pie, charging a total of $86.5 million or Rs7.9 billion –28.9% of the total programme cost. Similarly, the Unicef is charging $67.3 million or Rs6.2 billion – 22.3 % of the total cost.

To finance the project, the federal government has almost finalised a loan agreement with the Islamic Development Bank for the provision of $227.2 million or Rs20.7 billion. The IDB will charge a 5.1% markup. The World Bank will also provide a loan of $24 million for the programme.

Despite the huge allocation for the emergency programme, experts say its success hinges on the success of ongoing polio campaigns. They are of the opinion that unless routine coverage increases to 90% from the existing below 45%, the emergency programme will not succeed.


The programme was recently cleared by at meeting of the Central Development Working Party, headed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Dr Nadeemul Haque. It will become operational from January next year.
The stated objective of the emergency programme is to stop wild poliovirus transmission throughout the country.
As many as 33.4 million children under the age of five are targeted under this programme.

UNCIEF

Unicef will charge $21.1 million, or roughly Rs2 billion, as social mobilisation cost and another $36.2 million, or Rs3.3 billion, as “ongoing social mobilisation” cost. Furthermore, it will charge “7% for programme support cost” ($4.9 million) and another “9% for programme support cost” ($5.2 million).

An official working closely on the programme said that the 9% additional cost was unfair and needed to be settled. The agency is also charging 4.5% as procurement services charges.

World Health Organisation

WHO is charging roughly $73 million, or Rs6.6 billion, as operational cost and $8.8 million as surveillance cost. It is also charging $4.9 million or 7% of the total amount as programme support cost.

Officials added that, since 1994, WHO has established its surveillance networks at district levels, which the government has decided to use. However, despite years of surveillance, polio coverage remains behind the targets, highlighting issues in monitoring.

In addition to the international agencies’ charges, the government has also earmarked $36.1 million, or Rs3.2 billion for its own operational cost.

PM’s Polio Monitoring Cell 

The PM’s Polio Cell is allocated $1.1 million, or Rs98.7 million, as operational cost. An amount of Rs38.9 million is allocated for holding meetings and conferences, while telephone bills for three years have been estimated at Rs2 million. An amount of Rs400,000 has been fixed for gifts, while Rs10.3 million has been allocated to the PM’s Cell for running vehicles.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2012.

New UN “atlas” links climate change, health

Click here for this in full @ Las Vegas Sun: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/nov/02/eu-un-health-and-climate/

The Associated Press

Friday, Nov. 2, 2012 | 12:01 a.m.

The two U.N. agencies for health and weather services have created a new "atlas" of scientific data that they say offers fresh evidence of the links between climate change to outbreaks of meningitis, malaria and other diseases.

The World Health Organization director-general says the manual, which includes maps, tables and graphs, provides a practical guide to "climate-sensitive diseases" that decision-makers and leaders can use as a tool for prevention.

Click here for this in full @ Las Vegas Sun: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/nov/02/eu-un-health-and-climate/

The Pandemic That Wasn't

Henry I. Miller, 03.11.10, 12:00 PM ET

The H1N1 swine flu outbreak appears to have ended less like the rogue wild boar that United Nations bureaucrats predicted and more like roasted pork tenderloin with apples and sage. From the beginning the World Health Organization's actions have ranged from the dubious to the flagrantly incompetent.

Last June the WHO boosted the pandemic alert to the highest level, Phase 6. That meant that, according to the WHO, a pandemic was under way--the first time in 41 years that the organization had made such a declaration. But the WHO must have been suffering from four decades of amnesia because ordinary seasonal flu, which sweeps the world annually--and which is far more lethal than the currently circulating low-virulence H1N1 swine flu--certainly meets the organization's definition of a pandemic: infections over a wide geographic area that affect a large proportion of the population.

Ironically, one might even consider the emergence of the H1N1 flu during the past year a net public health benefit, since it appears to have suppressed, or at least supplanted, the far more virulent and lethal seasonal flu strains. During the second week of January, 3.7% of Americans tested positive for the seasonal flu, compared with 11.5% during the same week last year. The death toll in the U.S. from H1N1 is estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to be around 3,900, while in an average year seasonal flu kills about 36,000.

The WHO's April 2009 decision to raise the pandemic flu threat to the penultimate level, Phase 5, "Pandemic Imminent," was unwarranted and far outpaced the data accumulated. Even worse was the June declaration that a pandemic was under way, which exposed the WHO's flawed fundamental paradigm. A warning system based solely on how widely a virus has spread, but that does not consider the nature, severity and impact of the illness it causes, is prone to false positives; it would classify not only seasonal flu but also the frequent but largely inconsequential outbreaks of virus-caused colds and gastroenteritis as "pandemics." WHO has never offered any explanation for why these examples that seem to fit its definition of a pandemic do not meet its criteria.

False alarms make the "pandemic under way" designation almost meaningless, and they diminish its usefulness, which, in turn, has important consequences. As Dr. Jack Fisher, a professor of surgery at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, observed, "Keep crying 'wolf,' and WHO can expect lower than customary compliance with flu vaccine advisories next fall." Not only next fall, but also at some future time when we encounter a genuinely dangerous new pathogen such as a strain of H5N1 avian flu (which in its present form boasts a mortality rate more than 100 fold higher than the H1N1 swine flu) that is easily transmissible between humans.

The U.N.'s false alarms have had more immediate, negative effects. Matthew Hingerty, managing director of Australia's Tourism Export Council, lamented that the country lost thousands of tourists because of the WHO's pandemic declaration. Egyptian public health authorities overreacted and summarily ordered the slaughter of all the pigs in the country. In addition to the devastating economic losses, garbage filled the streets of Cairo and the numbers of rodents rose to fearsome levels because the pigs were no longer available to consume much of the garbage produced in the city. The U.N. indicted by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The publicity and resulting panic surrounding the WHO's announcement of Phase 5 and 6 alerts--especially since the vaccine was not widely available until December--also brought out the fraudulent peddling of all sorts of ineffective and possibly dangerous protective gear and nostrums, including gloves, masks, dietary supplements, shampoo, a nasal sanitizer and a spray that supposedly coats the hands with a layer of anti-microbial "ionic silver."

For all these reasons, the declaration of a pandemic cannot be a prognostication but rather should be a real-time snapshot, and it must only be made when science and common sense support it.

WHO's performance has been widely criticized. Most flu experts believe that the WHO's actions were overly alarmist and precipitous and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe announced that it plans to debate "false pandemics, a threat to health."

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And yet WHO officials continue to defend their actions. In a Jan. 14 conference call with reporters, Keiji Fukuda, special adviser to the WHO's director general for pandemic flu, remonstrated that the organization had not overplayed the dangers but "prepared for the worst and hoped for the best." Other communications were more strident. "The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible," the WHO said on Jan. 25. A particularly problematic statement came from WHO spokesman Greg Hartl, who said, "We cannot control how people react to" WHO announcements concerning pandemics. He would benefit from tutoring in risk communication.

The WHO's dubious decisions demonstrate that its officials are too rigid or too incompetent (or both) to make needed adjustments in the pandemic warning system--deficiencies we have come to expect from an organization that is scientifically challenged, self-important and unaccountable. The WHO may be able to perform and report worldwide surveillance--i.e., count numbers of cases and fatalities--but its policy role should be drastically limited.

U.N. bureaucrats pose as authorities on all manner of products, public policy and human activities, from desertification and biodiversity to the regulation of chemicals, uses of the ocean and the testing of genetically engineered plants. However, the U.N.'s regulatory policies, requirements and standards often defy scientific consensus and common sense. Its officials are no friends of commerce, public health or environmental protection. The result is a more precarious, more dangerous and less resilient world. When it comes to pestilence, the U.N. may be the greatest plague of all.

Henry I. Miller, a physician, molecular biologist and former flu researcher, is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was an official at the National Institutes of Health and Food & Drug Administration.

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U.N.: Behind the Scandal in Pyongyang

By George Russell

The mood was nervous around the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) conference table on a chilly Thursday, Dec. 8, 2005, in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

The officials were huddled in a UNDP villa in the United Nations compound, located in the secrecy-shrouded diplomatic Munsudong district of Pyongyang (known to some North Korean diplomats as "the greenhouse"). The U.N. managers felt that they were under siege — as, in a sense, they were. (Sources familiar with U.N. activities in North Korea supplied the bulk of the information about the meeting in this article.)

The small group around the table was made up of the operations managers of the United Nations agencies operating in North Korea: UNDP, the World Food Programme (WFP); the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF); the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Altogether, the group was responsible for administration, finance, human resources and security for their respective organizations, which were spending roughly $150 million on their own operations, and on numerous development and relief projects around Kim Jong Il's communist kingdom. The reason they were meeting was a deep concern on their part that all their activities might be illegal — a concern that has since turned into a full-blown scandal.

The officials had gotten together, after months of tense discussions among themselves, to make a collective appeal to the bosses of their agencies in North Korea, and ultimately to the heads of their worldwide organizations, and to the U.N. Secretary General (at the time, Kofi Annan) himself. By taking such a strong step, several of them were worried that they were about to damage their careers.

They were also worried about the possible presence of concealed North Korean spy devices in the room. And they were deeply distrustful of many of their local staff, whose credentials to work for the U.N. were unknown, and who had been imposed on them unilaterally by the Kim Jong Il regime.

But the U.N. officials were even more worried that failing to act would leave them and the U.N. deeply damaged by a continued pattern of unauthorized payments, in cash and in hard international currency, to the dictatorial North Korean government. And personally, they were worried that a future U.N. audit might cast a harsh spotlight on the highly irregular ways that their agencies, led by UNDP, were acting in North Korea, and might accuse all of them of acting illegally.

Every day, for example, agents from the regime's General Bureau for Diplomatic Services — a section of the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs that deals with, and spies on, foreign diplomats — would arrive at the U.N. compound and collect envelopes of cash, handed over by the U.N. to pay local salaries, utilities and maintenance fees. No receipts were ever given.

The same applied to money ostensibly used for U.N. agency projects around the country — projects that the staff were not free to visit at will, if ever. (The Munsudong compound is a highly restricted area, with armed patrols at its perimeter. The U.N. officials could only live in designated quarters located a few hundred yards from their office.)

• Click here to see a satellite image of the U.N. compound in Pyongyang (pdf format).

There were mild differences between the agencies, but the overall pattern of hard currency cash payments remained the same.

• Click here to see a spreadsheet of U.N. disbursement practices in North Korea (pdf format).

The mysteriously appointed local staff, who included critically important finance managers and communications specialists, were another matter of urgent concern. Many had received expensive U.N. training — only to be pulled out of U.N. employment after a few months on the job and assigned to other, unknown Korean government offices.

The U.N. operations officials were also uneasily aware that locally-appointed North Korean staff had access to sensitive U.N. files and communications, without supervisors' knowledge.

Even U.N.-designated cars and their North Korean drivers were operating outside U.N. control. Sometimes they were available and sometimes not; the officials were not even aware of what happened to their cars in the evening.

But the most disturbing fact under discussion in the Munsudong meeting was the absence of normal legal agreements with the North Korean government that would either justify or rein in the chaotic and mysterious operations of the agencies, which in the officials' experience did not conform with the U.N.'s operations anywhere else.

The most important of those agreements, known in UNDP jargon as an Operational Basic Agreement (OBA), had apparently vanished from U.N. files both in Pyongyang and in New York, sometime in 2001. That was a year or more after the U.N. agencies suddenly began making the unorthodox cash payments in Pyongyang, according to U.N. sources.

The only version of the OBA available to U.N officials in Pyongyang and Manhattan was a draft version, dated February 10, 1981.

• Click here to see the draft version of the Operational Basic Agreement (pdf format).

That version clearly states, among other things, that all payments to the North Korean government "will be made in local currency on the basis of monthly invoices."

The U.N. officials at the Munsudong session wanted the uncomfortable and disturbing situation in North Korea to end. By the time they finished their four-hour meeting, they had agreed to ask the U.N.'s most senior officials in North Korea to sign off on changes in procedure that would return the North Korean operations to something approaching normal.

• Click here to see the minutes of the Dec. 8, 2005 meeting (pdf format).

On January 24, 2006, after a winter hiatus, the group sent its proposals to their bosses, known collectively as the U.N. Country Team, including the U.N. Resident Coordinator, who is the U.N. Secretary General's personal representative in town. (The Coordinator was named Timo Pakkala, who doubled as the top UNDP official, or Resident Representative, in Pyongyang. Pakkala still holds both jobs.)

Among other things, the reformers suggested that the U.N. revert to paying its bills in local currency, as required in the organization's rules and regulations. They also suggested that cash payments be eliminated, and that the U.N. regain control over local hiring.

• Click here to see the Jan. 24, 2006 message from the Operations Management Team to the UNCT (pdf format).

The response was a long silence. The U.N. Country Team did not take up the issues raised by the subordinate managers until April 13, 2006 — a delay of three months. And the next response was opposition. As minutes of that meeting, obtained by FOX News, show, a number of U.N. agencies worried about the "impact it might have in the relations with the government as well as to local staff well-being." Other agency heads found the issues "rather not of their immediate concern" even though their own operations chiefs had signed off on the suggested changes.

Some agencies went further. While recognizing "the fact" that their financial rules and regulations demanded payment in local currency, "they feel that this issue is very sensitive and could endanger their relation with the government, even in the absence of a written explicit agreement" — a reference to the missing Operational Basic Agreement.

The final recommendation:of the U.N. agency heads was to "endorse the current practice of issuing payments in hard currency (US$/Euro) based on special conditions in the country."

• Click here to see the minutes of the April 13, 2006 UNCT meeting (pdf format).

The previously unpublished minutes of the U.N. Country Team in North Korea go a considerable way toward supporting accusations made against the UNDP by U.S. envoy to the U.N. Mark Wallace in January. Among other things, Wallace cited secret UNDP audits to accuse the organization of making cash payments to the Kim Jong Il regime in violation of UNDP rules; allowing North Korean government employees to "dominate" local staff; and allowing North Korean government workers to perform "financial and program managerial core functions" in another violation of organization rules. Wallace also accused UNDP of hiding evidence of the violations since 1999.

• Click here to read Ambassador Mark Wallace's letter to the United Nations Development Program (pdf format).

The minutes of the U.N. Country Team meeting on April 13, with their acknowledgement of "the fact' that financial rules and regulations demanded payment in local currency, also seem to rebut portions of a formal reply to Wallace given by UNDP's No. 2 official in New York, Ad Melkert. In a letter dated January 12, 2007, Melkert asserted that "there is no formal requirement to pay local expenditures exclusively in the local currency, although country offices are encouraged to utilize local currencies as circumstances permit."

• Click here to read UNDP Associate Administrator Ad Melkert's reply to Ambassador Wallace (pdf format).

In the same letter, however, Melkert declared that UNDP would give up the use of hard currency cash payments to North Korea effective March 1 and suspend nomination of its local staff by the Kim Jong Il government. A short time later, UNDP announced that the North Korean government had objected to the change of practice, and the agency would pull most of its international staff out of Pyongyang.

Meantime, the U.N.'s Board of auditors, on direction from newly appointed U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, is taking a look at the operations of U.N. agencies in North Korea.

The audit is supposed to conclude in early April.

George Russell is Executive Editor of Fox News.