Quote of the week
(week 6)
“He confuses his personal opinions sometimes with those of the General Assembly,” said Heraldo Muñoz, the ambassador from Chile. Mr. Muñoz credited Mr. d’Escoto with trying to make the General Assembly relevant by focusing attention on matters like the global financial crisis and reform of the Council.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/world/18nations.html
Mar 22, 2009
U.N. Official Says Darfur Continues to Crumble
March 21, 2009
U.N. Official Says Darfur Continues to Crumble
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
UNITED NATIONS — The humanitarian situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate in the wake of Sudan’s decision to expel major foreign aid organizations from the country, a top United Nations official told the Security Council on Friday, with a majority of Council members sharply criticizing Khartoum for refusing to reverse its edict.
Critical areas of concern in Darfur include distribution of adequate food, water and medical care, as well as the safety of United Nations personnel and humanitarian workers who have been subject to stepped-up attacks, said the official, Rashid Khalikov, the director in New York for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“Our ability to help the people of Darfur and northern Sudan has been seriously compromised,” he said. “The current atmosphere of fear and uncertainty facing all aid organizations is affecting the assistance available to the people of Darfur.”
Western ambassadors uniformly criticized Sudan for its decision to expel 13 foreign aid organizations and close three local ones, which the country did after the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced more than two weeks ago that it was indicting President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges.
Expressions of concern about the fate of about four million civilians in Darfur were universal from all 15 members of the Council. Even friends and neighbors of Sudan, like China, Uganda and Libya, which support a deferral of the court’s indictment, expressed concern about the impact of the expulsions.
Mr. Khalikov sketched a grim portrait of what was happening on the ground. Although the government expelled only 13 of scores of foreign agencies operating in Darfur, he said those provided about half of the distribution and provision of aid.
Over the past two weeks, one United Nations peacekeeper was killed and three were wounded in three separate attacks, he said. There have been meningitis outbreaks, as well. The expulsions ended a mass immunization campaign.
The United Nations is also troubled by the Sudanese government’s seizing assets from aid groups, Mr. Khalikov said.
Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, delivered one of the most barbed speeches, holding Mr. Bashir responsible for the fate of all the people in Darfur. “President Bashir created this crisis,” she said. “He should rectify it immediately.”
She noted that the United States had donated about $4 billion in aid to Sudan and eastern Chad since 2004, including $1.25 billion in the current fiscal year, and that it would continue working with the United Nations and remaining agencies to deliver humanitarian assistance.
The two Sudanese representatives who spoke objected to the singling out of Mr. Bashir, saying that the expulsion was a government decision and that it was irreversible. One accused the West of creating a crisis over the aid groups in order to deflect attention from the real problem, which they said was the indictment.
The meeting on Friday was unexpected, prompted by the United States as a means to keep the spotlight on the crisis, diplomats said. Ms. Rice told reporters that the United States felt it was necessary because there had not been an open meeting on the subject in the two weeks since the expulsions.
The Security Council has failed to reach an agreement on what to do about the confrontation with Sudan, and no concrete proposals came out of the Friday meeting.
An even wider discussion is expected next week after John Holmes, under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations, reports on a more thorough assessment of the aid situation being carried out in coordination with Sudan’s government.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, appeared at the microphones outside the Council chamber to suggest that the easiest solution to the problem was for Sudan itself to act.
“The Sudan has to find the way to arrest Bashir and stop the crimes; that is the best way,” he said.
Personal comment:
The region Darfur in the country Sudan in Africa has been a news item for a long time. The news about the terrible situation in the country seems to keep on coming. This article shows again that the population of Darfur experiences a difficult time.
Luckely there are a number of non profit organizations that want to take care of the people. However, it seems from this aritcle that the president of Sudan named: Bashir, is working against the foreign organisations that are providing health care.The outbreak of new diseases even worsens the situation.
At the end of the article it is stated that the people of Sudan should try to find a way to get rid of thier president, because the UN is not able to take care of Bashir. I feel that their should be a way for the UN/the world to take care of the people without having to pay attention to a president that is not acting in the best way for its nationals.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/world/africa/21nations.html?pagewanted=print
U.N. Official Says Darfur Continues to Crumble
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
UNITED NATIONS — The humanitarian situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate in the wake of Sudan’s decision to expel major foreign aid organizations from the country, a top United Nations official told the Security Council on Friday, with a majority of Council members sharply criticizing Khartoum for refusing to reverse its edict.
Critical areas of concern in Darfur include distribution of adequate food, water and medical care, as well as the safety of United Nations personnel and humanitarian workers who have been subject to stepped-up attacks, said the official, Rashid Khalikov, the director in New York for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“Our ability to help the people of Darfur and northern Sudan has been seriously compromised,” he said. “The current atmosphere of fear and uncertainty facing all aid organizations is affecting the assistance available to the people of Darfur.”
Western ambassadors uniformly criticized Sudan for its decision to expel 13 foreign aid organizations and close three local ones, which the country did after the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced more than two weeks ago that it was indicting President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges.
Expressions of concern about the fate of about four million civilians in Darfur were universal from all 15 members of the Council. Even friends and neighbors of Sudan, like China, Uganda and Libya, which support a deferral of the court’s indictment, expressed concern about the impact of the expulsions.
Mr. Khalikov sketched a grim portrait of what was happening on the ground. Although the government expelled only 13 of scores of foreign agencies operating in Darfur, he said those provided about half of the distribution and provision of aid.
Over the past two weeks, one United Nations peacekeeper was killed and three were wounded in three separate attacks, he said. There have been meningitis outbreaks, as well. The expulsions ended a mass immunization campaign.
The United Nations is also troubled by the Sudanese government’s seizing assets from aid groups, Mr. Khalikov said.
Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, delivered one of the most barbed speeches, holding Mr. Bashir responsible for the fate of all the people in Darfur. “President Bashir created this crisis,” she said. “He should rectify it immediately.”
She noted that the United States had donated about $4 billion in aid to Sudan and eastern Chad since 2004, including $1.25 billion in the current fiscal year, and that it would continue working with the United Nations and remaining agencies to deliver humanitarian assistance.
The two Sudanese representatives who spoke objected to the singling out of Mr. Bashir, saying that the expulsion was a government decision and that it was irreversible. One accused the West of creating a crisis over the aid groups in order to deflect attention from the real problem, which they said was the indictment.
The meeting on Friday was unexpected, prompted by the United States as a means to keep the spotlight on the crisis, diplomats said. Ms. Rice told reporters that the United States felt it was necessary because there had not been an open meeting on the subject in the two weeks since the expulsions.
The Security Council has failed to reach an agreement on what to do about the confrontation with Sudan, and no concrete proposals came out of the Friday meeting.
An even wider discussion is expected next week after John Holmes, under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator at the United Nations, reports on a more thorough assessment of the aid situation being carried out in coordination with Sudan’s government.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, appeared at the microphones outside the Council chamber to suggest that the easiest solution to the problem was for Sudan itself to act.
“The Sudan has to find the way to arrest Bashir and stop the crimes; that is the best way,” he said.
Personal comment:
The region Darfur in the country Sudan in Africa has been a news item for a long time. The news about the terrible situation in the country seems to keep on coming. This article shows again that the population of Darfur experiences a difficult time.
Luckely there are a number of non profit organizations that want to take care of the people. However, it seems from this aritcle that the president of Sudan named: Bashir, is working against the foreign organisations that are providing health care.The outbreak of new diseases even worsens the situation.
At the end of the article it is stated that the people of Sudan should try to find a way to get rid of thier president, because the UN is not able to take care of Bashir. I feel that their should be a way for the UN/the world to take care of the people without having to pay attention to a president that is not acting in the best way for its nationals.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/world/africa/21nations.html?pagewanted=print
Mar 15, 2009
Quote of the week
“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. “So we stopped it.”
Sugule Ali, Somali pirate that seized a Ukraine vessel loaded with weaponry in September
2008.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world/africa/01pirates.html
Sugule Ali, Somali pirate that seized a Ukraine vessel loaded with weaponry in September
2008.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world/africa/01pirates.html
Dutch police arrest 7 suspected of planning attack
Dutch police arrest 7 suspected of planning attack
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer Toby Sterling, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 12, 6:25 pm ET
AMSTERDAM – Dutch police on Thursday arrested seven people suspected of preparing a terrorist attack in Amsterdam, including a relative of one of the attackers who died in the 2004 bombings in Madrid.
Mayor Job Cohen said police were acting on an anonymous tip that warned an Ikea outlet or other stores in the southeast of the city might be targeted.
"It wasn't a regular bomb warning, but a warning of a planned action aimed at creating casualties in shops," Cohen said.
"Men were planning to put explosives in the shops and wanted to cause casualties in busy places," he said.
Police received the tip Wednesday night from an unregistered cell phone in Belgium. The tip also included names of one suspect and locations for police to search.
Early Thursday, authorities shut down a major Amsterdam shopping street near the ArenA soccer stadium and sealed off the nearby Ikea store. A concert by the American band "The Killers" was canceled.
District Attorney Herman Bolhaar said six men and one woman, aged 19-64, were arrested in Amsterdam. All are Dutch nationals of Moroccan ancestry.
"As far as we can tell, none involved has a history of terrorist involvement," he said at a news conference, though one suspect is related to "a person who exactly five years ago was involved in the attack in Madrid."
Police Commissioner Bernard Welten said the suspect's relative died shortly after the Madrid attacks "as a result of a suicide action."
Names of the suspects were not released.
Law enforcement officials in Belgium and the Netherlands have raided a number of houses in the investigation. Police declined to say whether any explosives were found.
The Dutch anti-terrorism coordinator's office said national threat levels had not been changed as a result of Thursday's events.
Welten said he believed the arrests had "reduced the immediate threat" of an attack in Amsterdam, but that further arrests could not be ruled out. He said the area around the Ikea store was likely to remain sealed Friday.
___
Associated Press Writer Mike Corder contributed to this story from The Hague.\
Personal comment:
The news story that I have selected for this weeks Current World Affair is about the Netherlands. Where a lot of people may think that it is a calm and small country that does not have to fear for any terrorist attacks, the story above shows it is not the case.
For the second time in a decade there has been a potential threat for bomb attacks in a crowded shopping area. Five years ago their was a bomb warning that there was a bomb hided in one out of ten IKEA stores in the Netherlands. After investigation it showed that there indeed was a bomb in one of the stores. It turned out that two Polish guys were responsable.
This time there was no bomb to be found. However, the seven people arrested show linkages with more threatning people/operations.
The problem I have with this story that I can not be 100% save even in my own coutry. Terrorist attacks do not only happen or threat the middle east or one of the bigger western countries. Even Holland some times have to deal with this kind of threats.
At the moment there is a large discussion going in Holland about the repsonse of the police to the threat of last week. Many people feel that the response was to big and to powerfull. Seven people got arrested and released again, and the entire potential bomb area was closed for more then a day.
I believe that the fact that a bomb has been found seven years ago shows that the government has to respond to this kind of threats with full power. Just in case there really is a bomb.
Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_re_eu/eu_netherlands_terror_2/print
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer Toby Sterling, Associated Press Writer Thu Mar 12, 6:25 pm ET
AMSTERDAM – Dutch police on Thursday arrested seven people suspected of preparing a terrorist attack in Amsterdam, including a relative of one of the attackers who died in the 2004 bombings in Madrid.
Mayor Job Cohen said police were acting on an anonymous tip that warned an Ikea outlet or other stores in the southeast of the city might be targeted.
"It wasn't a regular bomb warning, but a warning of a planned action aimed at creating casualties in shops," Cohen said.
"Men were planning to put explosives in the shops and wanted to cause casualties in busy places," he said.
Police received the tip Wednesday night from an unregistered cell phone in Belgium. The tip also included names of one suspect and locations for police to search.
Early Thursday, authorities shut down a major Amsterdam shopping street near the ArenA soccer stadium and sealed off the nearby Ikea store. A concert by the American band "The Killers" was canceled.
District Attorney Herman Bolhaar said six men and one woman, aged 19-64, were arrested in Amsterdam. All are Dutch nationals of Moroccan ancestry.
"As far as we can tell, none involved has a history of terrorist involvement," he said at a news conference, though one suspect is related to "a person who exactly five years ago was involved in the attack in Madrid."
Police Commissioner Bernard Welten said the suspect's relative died shortly after the Madrid attacks "as a result of a suicide action."
Names of the suspects were not released.
Law enforcement officials in Belgium and the Netherlands have raided a number of houses in the investigation. Police declined to say whether any explosives were found.
The Dutch anti-terrorism coordinator's office said national threat levels had not been changed as a result of Thursday's events.
Welten said he believed the arrests had "reduced the immediate threat" of an attack in Amsterdam, but that further arrests could not be ruled out. He said the area around the Ikea store was likely to remain sealed Friday.
___
Associated Press Writer Mike Corder contributed to this story from The Hague.\
Personal comment:
The news story that I have selected for this weeks Current World Affair is about the Netherlands. Where a lot of people may think that it is a calm and small country that does not have to fear for any terrorist attacks, the story above shows it is not the case.
For the second time in a decade there has been a potential threat for bomb attacks in a crowded shopping area. Five years ago their was a bomb warning that there was a bomb hided in one out of ten IKEA stores in the Netherlands. After investigation it showed that there indeed was a bomb in one of the stores. It turned out that two Polish guys were responsable.
This time there was no bomb to be found. However, the seven people arrested show linkages with more threatning people/operations.
The problem I have with this story that I can not be 100% save even in my own coutry. Terrorist attacks do not only happen or threat the middle east or one of the bigger western countries. Even Holland some times have to deal with this kind of threats.
At the moment there is a large discussion going in Holland about the repsonse of the police to the threat of last week. Many people feel that the response was to big and to powerfull. Seven people got arrested and released again, and the entire potential bomb area was closed for more then a day.
I believe that the fact that a bomb has been found seven years ago shows that the government has to respond to this kind of threats with full power. Just in case there really is a bomb.
Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090312/ap_on_re_eu/eu_netherlands_terror_2/print
Mar 8, 2009
Quote of the week! (week 4)
"Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war,"
said the statement, carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_tension
said the statement, carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_tension
Medical Care in Romania Comes at an Extra Cost
Current World Affair
(week 4)
March 9, 2009
Medical Care in Romania Comes at an Extra Cost
By DAN BILEFSKY
BUCHAREST, Romania — Alina Lungu, 30, said she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: she ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra $255 in cash, paid in monthly installments handed over discreetly in white envelopes.
She paid a nurse about $32 extra to guarantee an epidural and even gave about $13 to the orderly to make sure he did not drop the stretcher.
But on the day of her delivery, she said, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. A doctor finally appeared and found that the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby’s neck and had nearly suffocated him. He was born blind and deaf and is severely brain damaged.
Now, Alina and her husband, Ionut, despair that the bribes they paid were not enough to prevent the negligence that they say harmed their son, Sebastian. “Doctors are so used to getting bribes in Romania that you now have to pay more in order to even get their attention,” she said.
Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption that was honed during decades of Communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.
Alarm is growing in Brussels that Romania and other recent entrants to the European Union are undermining the bloc’s rule of law. The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, published a damning report last month criticizing Romania for backtracking on judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. And Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog, ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union last year, behind neighboring Bulgaria.
Those who have faced corruption allegations in recent years have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anticorruption investigators.
Romanians say it is the everyday graft and bribery that blights their lives, and nowhere are the abuses more glaring than in the socialized health care system.
Interviews with doctors, patients and ethicists suggest that the culture of bribery has infected every level of the system, sometimes leaving patients desperate.
One doctor said a patient recently offered him a free shopping trip to Dubai, an offer he declined.
The issue of health care corruption gained national attention in January when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him from room to room trying to get a doctor to treat him, said in an interview that she believed he had been refused care “because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe.” The hospital said Mr. Constantinescu had not seemed an emergency case.
Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, which represents 47,000 doctors, blamed a pitifully low average monthly wage of about $510 for doctors for the bribe-taking.
“Patients don’t want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, ‘How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?’ ” Dr. Astarastoae said. “So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe.”
He said that unlike in many Western countries, where doctors are respected and handsomely rewarded for years of hard study, the medical profession here had been denigrated under Communist leaders who made workers in factories the country’s heroes.
A 2005 study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, patients typically pay bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family’s monthly income, the study showed.
Some doctors say that the bribery culture is so endemic that when they refuse bribes, some patients become distraught and mistakenly conclude it is a sign that their illnesses are incurable.
Doctors and patients say the bribery follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from $127 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to more than $6,370 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Web sites.
Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International’s Romanian branch, said public hospitals routinely exchanged “supplementary payment” lists to ensure that they had the same rates.
Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and antibribery advocate, recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to a hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he finally received treatment, but only after paying the doctor an extra $510.
Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, said that when he was a young doctor, a senior physician forbade him to talk with patients for three months. She explained that by spending more time with patients than she was, and appearing more caring, he was putting a dent in her bribery earnings.
Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of a medical school in Bucharest, said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest’s Medical School “since the teachers were taking bribes themselves.”
Dr. Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out. He said that the college had the power to revoke the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe but added that few patients were willing to identify their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other doctors.
The Ministry of Health has taken some steps to try to change the culture of bribery. It recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed with calls. Hospitals here are plastered with antibribery posters.
But Liviu Manaila, Romania’s secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the culture would not change fundamentally until doctors’ pay increased. While he said the government’s budget was too strained to raise wages, he proposed revamping Romania’s socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs. He said their payments could be used to pay doctors higher fees.
Ms. Lungu, Sebastian’s mother, said that whatever changes were made, they should start now, before other children suffer like her son, who will probably spend his life in a vegetative state.
"The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients,” she said. “It has got to be stopped.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09bribery.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
Summary:
The article above from the Monday 9 march in the New York Times shows the state of the health care system in Romania. From the article it appears that the system is full of bribing. It is common to bribe a doctor in order to get the best service and treatment possible. The big problem is that the level of the bribes are so high that the poor people in Romania have to spend up to almost one month salary. Even then they are still not sure of the best possible treatment and service.The low salary for the medical personnel is given as a reason for the bribing. In Europe it is common for doctors to have a large salary. In Romania however doctors receive a relative small salary. Accepting bribes is the easiest way for them to increase their salary.
Personal comment:
This week the Current World Affair class is focusing on Tibet. The main problem in Tibet is the violation of human rights. The article about the healthcare in Romania made me think about human rights as well.Since the level of the bribes is getting higher and higher, less people can afford to bribe a doctor. This implicitly means that a number of patients will not get the medical treatment they need. I think that medical health care is a human right and it should not be based on a base of bribing. The practice in Romania at the moment shows that the medical system there is not on the level where it should be. In the 21st century you would expect that everybody should get the same attention when it comes to health care. The bribes in Romania however are a big obstacle.I want to emphasize that I completely disagree with the way it is going in Romania at the moment. However, I can understand that doctors are accepting extra money in order to take care of their family. Since Romania is part of the EU I believe that the EU should get involved in the problem. Since Romania wanted to join the EU, I think they are obliged to do something on their healthcare system and in this way make sure that all people get the same treatment.
(week 4)
March 9, 2009
Medical Care in Romania Comes at an Extra Cost
By DAN BILEFSKY
BUCHAREST, Romania — Alina Lungu, 30, said she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy pregnancy in Romania: she ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her gynecologist with an extra $255 in cash, paid in monthly installments handed over discreetly in white envelopes.
She paid a nurse about $32 extra to guarantee an epidural and even gave about $13 to the orderly to make sure he did not drop the stretcher.
But on the day of her delivery, she said, her gynecologist never arrived. Twelve hours into labor, she was left alone in her room for an hour. A doctor finally appeared and found that the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her baby’s neck and had nearly suffocated him. He was born blind and deaf and is severely brain damaged.
Now, Alina and her husband, Ionut, despair that the bribes they paid were not enough to prevent the negligence that they say harmed their son, Sebastian. “Doctors are so used to getting bribes in Romania that you now have to pay more in order to even get their attention,” she said.
Romania, a poor Balkan country of 22 million that joined the European Union two years ago, is struggling to shed a culture of corruption that was honed during decades of Communism, when Romanians endured long lines just to get basics like eggs and milk and used bribes to acquire scarce products and services.
Alarm is growing in Brussels that Romania and other recent entrants to the European Union are undermining the bloc’s rule of law. The European Commission, the European Union’s executive body, published a damning report last month criticizing Romania for backtracking on judicial changes necessary to fight corruption. And Transparency International, the Berlin-based anticorruption watchdog, ranked Romania as the second most corrupt country in the 27-member European Union last year, behind neighboring Bulgaria.
Those who have faced corruption allegations in recent years have included a former prime minister, more than 1,100 doctors and teachers, 170 police officers and 3 generals, according to Romanian anticorruption investigators.
Romanians say it is the everyday graft and bribery that blights their lives, and nowhere are the abuses more glaring than in the socialized health care system.
Interviews with doctors, patients and ethicists suggest that the culture of bribery has infected every level of the system, sometimes leaving patients desperate.
One doctor said a patient recently offered him a free shopping trip to Dubai, an offer he declined.
The issue of health care corruption gained national attention in January when a 63-year-old man, Mihai Constantinescu, died of a heart attack in the waiting room of a hospital in Slatina, in southern Romania. Mihaela Ionita, the nurse who wheeled him from room to room trying to get a doctor to treat him, said in an interview that she believed he had been refused care “because he appeared poor and could not afford a bribe.” The hospital said Mr. Constantinescu had not seemed an emergency case.
Dr. Vasile Astarastoae, a biomedical ethicist who is president of the Romanian College of Physicians, which represents 47,000 doctors, blamed a pitifully low average monthly wage of about $510 for doctors for the bribe-taking.
“Patients don’t want to go to a doctor who is distracted thinking, ‘How will I feed my kids or pay the rent?’ ” Dr. Astarastoae said. “So there is a conspiracy between the doctor and the patient to pay a bribe.”
He said that unlike in many Western countries, where doctors are respected and handsomely rewarded for years of hard study, the medical profession here had been denigrated under Communist leaders who made workers in factories the country’s heroes.
A 2005 study conducted by the World Bank for the Romanian Ministry of Health concluded that so-called informal payments amounted to $360 million annually. When an illness requires hospitalization, patients typically pay bribes equivalent to three-quarters of a family’s monthly income, the study showed.
Some doctors say that the bribery culture is so endemic that when they refuse bribes, some patients become distraught and mistakenly conclude it is a sign that their illnesses are incurable.
Doctors and patients say the bribery follows a set of unwritten rules. The cost of bribes depends on the treatment, ranging from $127 for a straightforward appendix-removal operation to up to more than $6,370 for brain surgery. The suggested bribery prices are passed on by word of mouth, and are publicized on blogs and Web sites.
Victor Alistar, director of Transparency International’s Romanian branch, said public hospitals routinely exchanged “supplementary payment” lists to ensure that they had the same rates.
Dr. Adela Salceanu, a psychiatrist and antibribery advocate, recalled that one friend, a 42-year-old lawyer, recently broke two legs in a basketball game and was taken to a hospital for surgery. When he did not offer money to the orthopedic surgeon on duty, his procedure was postponed for a week; he finally received treatment, but only after paying the doctor an extra $510.
Mugur Ciumageanu, a psychiatrist who has practiced in public hospitals in Bucharest, said that when he was a young doctor, a senior physician forbade him to talk with patients for three months. She explained that by spending more time with patients than she was, and appearing more caring, he was putting a dent in her bribery earnings.
Marilena Tiron, 26, a recent graduate of a medical school in Bucharest, said the issue of bribery did not come up in her optional medical ethics class at the University of Bucharest’s Medical School “since the teachers were taking bribes themselves.”
Dr. Astarastoae, of the Romanian College of Physicians, acknowledged that bribery needed to be rooted out. He said that the college had the power to revoke the licenses of doctors implicated in a bribe but added that few patients were willing to identify their doctors for fear they could be shunned by other doctors.
The Ministry of Health has taken some steps to try to change the culture of bribery. It recently set up a free phone line for patients to report abuses. Within an hour, it was jammed with calls. Hospitals here are plastered with antibribery posters.
But Liviu Manaila, Romania’s secretary of state for health, said in an interview that the culture would not change fundamentally until doctors’ pay increased. While he said the government’s budget was too strained to raise wages, he proposed revamping Romania’s socialized medical system so that patients took on a greater burden of the costs. He said their payments could be used to pay doctors higher fees.
Ms. Lungu, Sebastian’s mother, said that whatever changes were made, they should start now, before other children suffer like her son, who will probably spend his life in a vegetative state.
"The problem is that all this black money absolves doctors of their moral responsibility toward their patients,” she said. “It has got to be stopped.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09bribery.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
Summary:
The article above from the Monday 9 march in the New York Times shows the state of the health care system in Romania. From the article it appears that the system is full of bribing. It is common to bribe a doctor in order to get the best service and treatment possible. The big problem is that the level of the bribes are so high that the poor people in Romania have to spend up to almost one month salary. Even then they are still not sure of the best possible treatment and service.The low salary for the medical personnel is given as a reason for the bribing. In Europe it is common for doctors to have a large salary. In Romania however doctors receive a relative small salary. Accepting bribes is the easiest way for them to increase their salary.
Personal comment:
This week the Current World Affair class is focusing on Tibet. The main problem in Tibet is the violation of human rights. The article about the healthcare in Romania made me think about human rights as well.Since the level of the bribes is getting higher and higher, less people can afford to bribe a doctor. This implicitly means that a number of patients will not get the medical treatment they need. I think that medical health care is a human right and it should not be based on a base of bribing. The practice in Romania at the moment shows that the medical system there is not on the level where it should be. In the 21st century you would expect that everybody should get the same attention when it comes to health care. The bribes in Romania however are a big obstacle.I want to emphasize that I completely disagree with the way it is going in Romania at the moment. However, I can understand that doctors are accepting extra money in order to take care of their family. Since Romania is part of the EU I believe that the EU should get involved in the problem. Since Romania wanted to join the EU, I think they are obliged to do something on their healthcare system and in this way make sure that all people get the same treatment.
Mar 2, 2009
Quote of the week
Current World Affair (week 3)
"The scientists split the atom; now the atom is splitting us"
Quentin Reynolds quotes (American World War II Correspondent, Writer and Editor. 1902-1965)
"The scientists split the atom; now the atom is splitting us"
Quentin Reynolds quotes (American World War II Correspondent, Writer and Editor. 1902-1965)
Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make bomb: U.S.
Article Current World Affair (week 3)
Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make bomb: U.S.
Sun Mar 1, 10:15 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.
"We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen said on CNN's "State of the Union" program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
"And Iran having nuclear weapons, I've believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome -- for the region and for the world," Mullen said.
A watchdog report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago said Iran had built up a stockpile of nuclear fuel, raising alarm among Western governments that Tehran might have understated by one third how much uranium it has enriched.
The United States suspects Iran of trying to use its nuclear program to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists it is purely for the peaceful generation of electricity. Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.
U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which favors diplomatic engagement with Tehran to defuse the dispute over its nuclear intentions, called Iran's nuclear program an "urgent problem" the international community must address.
The IAEA report showed a significant increase in Iran's reported stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) since November to 1,010 kg -- enough, some physicists say, for possible conversion into high-enriched uranium for one bomb.
The IAEA later said Iran was cooperating well with U.N. nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched, suggesting the uranium accounting shortfall might not have been deliberate evasion.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090301/ts_nm/us_nuclear_iran_mullen/print
Personal reaction:
In the article above U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen states that he believes that Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make a atom bomb. To me this article says that the entire world is sin danger of an atomic war. This weeks Current World Affair class has made us focused on the threat of North Korea.
I feel that Iran can become the new North Korea. If they have the power to make an atom bomb they can use it as a bargaining or threatning tool in their relation with other countries. So there is no guarentee that when the issue with North Korea is resolved all the problems with atom bombs are resolved.
Iran is a country that can use their power to blackmail or destroy other countries. A number of articles this week in different news sources say that a number of countries are working on the Iran problem. However I feel that North Korea is the main target at the moment. Maybe Iran should get more attention in order to prevent it from becoming 'the new' North Korea.
More readings on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7917726.stm
Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make bomb: U.S.
Sun Mar 1, 10:15 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States believes Iran has stockpiled enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said on Sunday.
"We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen said on CNN's "State of the Union" program when asked whether Iran has enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.
"And Iran having nuclear weapons, I've believed for a long time, is a very very bad outcome -- for the region and for the world," Mullen said.
A watchdog report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago said Iran had built up a stockpile of nuclear fuel, raising alarm among Western governments that Tehran might have understated by one third how much uranium it has enriched.
The United States suspects Iran of trying to use its nuclear program to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists it is purely for the peaceful generation of electricity. Enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.
U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, which favors diplomatic engagement with Tehran to defuse the dispute over its nuclear intentions, called Iran's nuclear program an "urgent problem" the international community must address.
The IAEA report showed a significant increase in Iran's reported stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) since November to 1,010 kg -- enough, some physicists say, for possible conversion into high-enriched uranium for one bomb.
The IAEA later said Iran was cooperating well with U.N. nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched, suggesting the uranium accounting shortfall might not have been deliberate evasion.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090301/ts_nm/us_nuclear_iran_mullen/print
Personal reaction:
In the article above U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen states that he believes that Iran has enough nuclear fuel to make a atom bomb. To me this article says that the entire world is sin danger of an atomic war. This weeks Current World Affair class has made us focused on the threat of North Korea.
I feel that Iran can become the new North Korea. If they have the power to make an atom bomb they can use it as a bargaining or threatning tool in their relation with other countries. So there is no guarentee that when the issue with North Korea is resolved all the problems with atom bombs are resolved.
Iran is a country that can use their power to blackmail or destroy other countries. A number of articles this week in different news sources say that a number of countries are working on the Iran problem. However I feel that North Korea is the main target at the moment. Maybe Iran should get more attention in order to prevent it from becoming 'the new' North Korea.
More readings on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7917726.stm
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