From the L.A. Times:
The public health system in the West African nation is a shambles and the government teeters on the edge. Some fear it could become another Somalia.
First Of Two Parts - When the power went out that night, Dr. Ibrahim Thorlie was operating on his fifth patient of the day in a maternity hospital with a shortage of antibiotics and running water. His colleague was doing an emergency caesarean in the next room. In the corridor, a bucket on the floor held a stillborn baby.
Thorlie turned wordlessly in the darkened room and lifted his gloved hands. Sweat beaded up on his forehead like dewdrops. A nurse reached into the surgeon's pocket and pulled out his penlight, a pas de deux they had clearly performed many times before.
Read more ....
My Comment: The key paragraph in this story is the following ....
More than $1 trillion in foreign aid -- a major chunk of it from the United States -- has been pumped into Africa over the last half-century. Yet, on most of the continent, people are poorer and less healthy than before.
$1 trillion dollars .... and there is nothing to show for it.
If there was ever a poster child of how liberal government run programs can bring devastation and corruption on an unimaginable scale to a society .... Sierra Leone is it.
Even with some of the richest diamond mines in the world, no one wants to invest money into a region that is dominated by corruption and crime. I know that I would not.
So the same old African story continues. Limited (if any) free markets, government intervention everywhere, a collapsing social system, crime and violence everywhere, no viable legal institutions, non-existent infrastructure, and the prospect of war and violence on the horizon.
And the West's answer to all of this is .... how much more money should we send.