I don’t have any special knowledge of medical matters myself, but would like to pass on these comments from a reader writes:
I am an medical equipment engineer and installer, my wife is a mid-wife, so we both for different reasons take a keen interest in medical stories, ESPECIALLY at teatime, when we eat and watch the evening news.
So tonight 28/5 we were both intestested in in a news
item on the 6 o’clock news, “Iraqis take charge of their
own health service” report (proberbly repeated at 10pm
if you are interested)Before I explain this, approx 3 years ago we were both
watching Channel 4 news and an item about the UN
sanctions agianst Saddam. We both noted the state of
the hospital and the 1970s Soviet incubators being
used, we were both horrified. This hospital as I
recall was stated as being the Baghdad main hospital.So cue tonights report on the six o’clock news. To
most certainly the same hospital.The reporter in her
report walked past some brand new incubators and
remarked, “there are no spare parts for these incubators” not “infant mortality is obviously going to improve now
that modern western incubators are availible” NO that
just would not fit into THE PICTURE would it?I was mortified at the offhand, crass and misleading
reporting, I counted at least 6 brand new incubators
and all she can say “there are no spare parts”As for the spare parts issue, I found out from a
blogger site yesterday (no one else had cared to
mention it) that commercial flights were once agian
going to Baghdad, this is important as it is well
known in the medical equipment industry, that service
and maintainence are the key standards that companies
compete against each other at. I was in Cairo a few
weeks ago working and got parts delivered from
Chicago in 14 hours, so I am pretty certain Fedex
will be delivering into Iraq, especially as 120k of
American soldiers are there.I enjoyed my meal, but saying that I still feel sick,
how could the reporting standards of the BBC, who are
supposed to be the benchmark of world TV be so low?
On a separate topic of ‘fat cat’ pay.
Today’s BBC 1’o’ clock news for some reason didn’t make any comment on the fact that the ‘fat cat’ directors of Network Rail’ , the government quango set up to run the permanent way, have awarded themselves huge bonuses ,despite the continuing poor performance of their company.
Strangely , when the directors of ‘Railtrack’ behaved in a simlilar fashion , the BBC made an enormous fuss about it.
Why is the BBC so hot + bothered when greedy directors snaffle private shareholders money , but not when it’s taxpayers money ?????
I’ve got no quibbles with the point that people in general (not even those who you’d necessarily class as leftists) view private fat-cattery as worse than public snout-troughery.
However, it would be a very foolish mistake to class Railtrack’s directors’ ill-gotten gains as “private shareholders’ money not taxpayers’ money”. Who d’you think ultimately footed the bill for the company’s ridiculous misadventures?
Well, it “wouldn’t do” to acknowledge that new incubators had been supplied, probably by one or more of the coalition members. Possibly even by private donations.
Heaven help us all if the Beeb is ever forced to admit that things are getting better in Iraq.
I’m sure that if they visit a rebuilt school they’ll bitch about the color scheme.
Like all the hospitals are open for business.
Did you know one of our companies donated enough drugs for a year? The details were vague.
Actually, FedEx has been going in and out of Iraq for months. I had reason to call them about 2 months ago to ask if they were providing service to Iraq and indeed they were, indeed they had been for, according to the rep I spoke to ‘months’.
“Who d’you think ultimately footed the bill for the company’s ridiculous misadventures?”
That’s part of my point – (although private investors put their cash into Railtrack , whereas ‘Notwork’ Rail depends on huge borrowings guaranteed by taxpayers)- the difference between the companies is that one is a ‘nasty’ private company -even if it gets subsidies from taxpayers – and the other is a ‘nice’, cuddly ‘ Nu Labour company -which gets even bigger subsidies .
However ,the treatment of the ‘fat cat’ bonus issue by the BBC is totally different depending on the nature of the company!