Via the UN News Centre: UN in talks to set up independent panel of experts to probe origin of cholera in Haiti. Evidently the UN is feeling the pressure. Excerpt, and then a rant:
The United Nations is exploring the establishment of an international scientific panel to look into the source of the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
“We are calling for an international panel and we are in discussions with WHO [the UN World Health Organization] to find the best experts to be in a panel, completely independent… [and] have the best investigation on the source of the outbreak,” the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), Alain Le Roy, told a press conference at UN Headquarters.
The Department later added that the Secretary-General is in discussions with interested stakeholders, including WHO, and that the panel will be completely independent and will have full access to all UN premises and personnel. The specific terms of reference will be established in the coming days and the SG may have more to say on this on Friday.
Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which broke out in October, has already killed more than 2,000 people, according to figures from Haiti’s Ministry of Health, with over 44,000 others hospitalized, even as the country struggles to recover from the January quake, which killed 200,000 people and displaced some 1.3 million others – most of whom are still living in crowded and unsanitary tent camps.
There have been widespread media reports claiming that UN peacekeepers from Nepal, serving with the UN stabilization mission in Haiti, are the likely source of the epidemic, with infected water having spread from their base into a nearby tributary of the Artibonite River.
Mr. Le Roy said experts who have studied the epidemic have so far come up with different theories on the origin of the infection. “There is no consensus among scientists on this issue,” he noted.
Evidently the UN is ditching its Nepalese employees.
But I have one other comment: The UN needs employees who can write for its websites.
As a general rule, web text readability drops off sharply as sentence length increases. Most sentences should average no more than 20 words, and most paragraphs should be no more than 3 or 4 sentences.
The second paragraph of this story is 58 words long. The first sentence of the third paragraph is 35 words long. The third paragraph is a single sentence 61 words long. The fourth paragraph is another single sentence, 43 words long.
I'm not picking just on the UN. After 20 years, most business and governmental organizations still don't understand how to write for the web and its users. They keep writing for print, and for highly educated readers. And even those readers appreciate clear, concise writing.
So a report like this one is a waste of most people's time. They'll take one look and surf away to someplace understandable.
