I was told today that charity workers in the HIV/Aids sector who haven’t been paid for months are offering themselves for sex – often unprotected – because they cannot afford to eat or pay their rent.
This is a grim irony which makes for good copy but is not a story one relishes having to tell. See the article I wrote here.
The chronic poverty in the sector is not down to a lack of cash. According to the World Policy Institute think-tank, $10 million in international donations for Aids charities has been lying idle as people die without proper treatment.
The problem is bureaucracy.
As with so much else in Nepalese public life, the process of getting the money where it is needed is being hopelessly delayed, hamstrung by a mountain of red tape, trifling legal issues and egregious procrastination which looks positively venal given the urgent need of the country’s 700,000 HIV/Aids patients.
This worrying development emerges as Nepal’s parliament nears yet another deadline to agree a constitution to take the country forward and complete a peace process which has been dragging on since the end of the civil war in 2006.
In a country which has seen so much suffering in recent years, a stifling inertia brought about by a lack of will to exact change may well be Nepal’s biggest tragedy.