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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday May 24 2017, @04:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the who? dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The UN's World Health Organization ponies up some $200 million a year for luxury travel, including first-class tickets and posh hotels – much more than it spends on combatting[sic] AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria, the AP has revealed.

According to internal files obtained by the news agency, since 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) has allocated $803 million for travel – approximately $200 million per year. The WHO's two-billion-dollar annual budget is made up of contributions made by 194 member countries, of which the US is the largest sponsor.

Last year, the WHO allocated just over $60 million to tackling malaria and $59 million to containing the spread of tuberculosis, while $71 million was spent on fighting AIDS and hepatitis. Programs aimed at containing certain diseases, such as polio, do get considerably larger funding, however, with $450 million allocated annually.

Though the organization has been struggling to achieve its goals, while at the same time appealing for more financing, its employees and top brass apparently do not shy away from booking first-class airline tickets and rooms in luxurious five-star hotels.

In particular, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and Executive Director Bruce Aylward are first and second on the list of the agency's top spenders, according to a confidential 25-page analysis of the WHO's expenses seen by AP.

Source: https://www.rt.com/news/389198-who-travel-costs-report/

Additional Coverage: U.S. News & World Report


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @04:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @04:32PM (#514913)

    Money generally gets soaked up by ever-expanding administration and bureaucracy. Pournelle's Iron Law. This is one of the primary arguments for keeping government and governmental organizations as small as possible. Even better would be to elimiate and replace them on a regular basis.

    That's not a cure, that's recipe for infection. The solution for bloated, ineffective government is not deconstruction. It is good governance. Good governance takes care, expertise and lots of hard work. Tearing down is easy and simple, but there are no shortcuts in life. When you tear down institutions and then fail to put in the hard work you failed to put in with the prior institution the people that fill the void will be at best inexperienced and more likely craven opportunists and then we are worse off than before.

    "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong"

    PS, anyone who ever read Pournelle's Chaos Manor column in Byte knows the guy is a self-important fool.