NGO expose

3 December 2004

I talked with an American doctor who has been in Bodh Gaya for a couple of months trying to run a free clinic at Sechen Monastery (tibettan nyingma). The doctors in India are unbelievably poor, he relates, they buy their degrees from dealers -- one in Bodh Gaya didn't even know what side the liver is on. If a needle is dropped on the floor they pick it up, wipe it with their hand and put it in the patient.

Apparently the World Health Organization would pay for polio vaccines and all the clinic has to do is apply for them. But the Tibettans in charge said basically it would be a waste to spend money on these people; there is no point throwing money at a disease that can't be treated. This is IMMUNIZATION. Its a very common attitude among Indians and Tibettans : the wretched poor have bad karma, and that's why they are in the situation they are in. On top of this, the Indians can call caste and say that its their place to be suffering: someone has to. He can't take it and he's leaving to work on another project.

He has a lot of experience in NGOs in Nepal. Its a black hole of money, he says, very little of it reaches the needy; the administration costs eat it all up, transferring the money from the Western middle class to the Eastern upper class who run the organizations.

Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam are both very solid organizations and deserve your support.

"One good journalist could save more lives than a hundred doctors..."



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