UNITED
NATIONS - MASH, the long-running TV sitcom derived
from a movie about the lives of surgeons and
other medics at a mobile field hospital during
the three-year
UN "police action" in Korea, is still
around in reruns and, in Manhattan, can be caught
several hours a day on a regular channel or on
cable by viewers who may never get enough of
the antics of Col. Potter, Hawkeye, BJ, Hot Lips,
Radar,
Klinger and the other oddballs who made great
fun of a war that claimed more than 33,000 American
lives in combat.
Now,
unfunny Kabul has its own MASH, of sorts.
With an assist from
the generous, socially
conscious government
of Denmark, the UN
has set up an emergency
mobile hospital in
the Afghan capital.
On the Korean MASH
model, this will be
a 24/7 operation. But
its primary function,
a switch here, is not
to treat wounded Afghans
but to deliver babies.
There are an estimated
20 to 30 of them arriving
in in Kabul evey day
and, until now, virtually
no medical facilities
existed to take care
of the new-born and
their mothers.
However,
Kabul's MASH will
also handle what
a UN announcement says,
without further explanation,
are an expected to
be 2,000 daily "medical
enquiries." Presumably,
medical staff will
be on hand to field
questions about sore
throats or more serious
manifestations of the
wear and tear of life
in a city struggling
to regain a modicum
of normalcy after all
it's gone through.
Credit the UN Population
Fund for creating this
MASH.
This is the UN agency
that recently lost
$34 million in anticipated
US funding, thanks
to a controversy over
whether it helps finance
involuntary abortion
programs in China,
where a draconian birth
control policy is in
place. UNFPA officials
have, for years, denied
any such complicity.
They have always insisted
that abortion is not
an acceptable means
of curbing population
growth. But some key
conservatives in the
US government continue
to make it an issue,
while raising other
questions about UN
operations aimed at
helping poor, needy
people.
Losing what for UNFPA
is a very sizable chunk
of annual income will
curb or jeopardize
programs in many developing
countries, where the
Fund's support has
been and remains critical
to the eradication
of poverty and for
sustainable development,
critics of the American
action have said. Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell,
who has called sustainable
development of poor
countries a moral imperative,
likely disagreed with
the decision to suspend
UNFPA funding.
The Group of 77, representing
133 developing countries,
just approved an appeal
to Washington to lift
the ban and send a
check to UNFPA PDQ.
Meanwhile, UN staff
serving in Afghanistan
deserve a salute. There's
just been another instance
of the hazards they
must contend with in
trying to help an unruly
country with a lot
of wild people wandering
around who may have
little interest in
getting the stricken
nation back on its
feet after decades
of war and turmoil.
This time, it was the
office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees
that got hit.
Mercifully, no member
of the staff was hurt
when three gunmen invaded
the UNHCR premises
at Ghazni, south west
of Kabul, and herded
protesting employees
into a bathroom which
they locked. The office
was ransacked and a
safe rifled before
the hoodlums made of
with equipment and
other valuable material.
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