Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today sent a letter requesting that Congress confront a pattern of poor medical and public health policies being implemented by the World Health Organization (WHO), the health agency of the United Nations. 

The following are excerpts from the letter by CAGW President Tom Schatz to Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Ranking Member Joseph Biden (D-Del.) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) and Ranking Member Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) of the House International Relations Committee.

On April 6, a Washington Post column, “How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated,” exposed that for many years the United Nations inflated the number of people living with HIV/AIDS to justify its demands for more donor money.  

In CAGW’s recent report, WHO: Taxpayers Won't Get Fooled Again, we showed how the agency has failed in several health campaigns, such as treating malaria and HIV/AIDS, and often supports activities based on political correctness and achieving publicity rather than commonsense health policies.  These failures should be of concern to Congress and taxpayers, since the United States is WHO’s largest contributor, currently providing 22 percent of the agency’s regular budget.  In 2006-2007, that amount will be approximately $201 million.

In April 2006, the WHO issued a report, “Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights,” that provided the same tired arguments that patent laws and developed countries, like the United States, don’t do enough to solve the world’s health problems, and are to be blamed for failures to deliver treatments to the developing world. 

The WHO has been successful in the past in improving public health, such as fighting smallpox and polio, but now seems to be following in the footpath of its parent, the U.N., and involving itself in questionable activities.  Later this month, the WHO will convene the 59^th World Health Assembly to discuss these critical issues.  We encourage Congress to aggressively scrutinize the WHO’s mission and objectives to ensure taxpayer money is not being squandered on unsound health policy.

The complete letter is posted on CAGW’s website, www.cagw.org.   

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement, and abuse in government.