'Reproductive health' clinic in Kenya. (hewlett.org)

A pair of new studies conclude that U.N.-sponsored health programs may have been a multibillion-dollar boondoggle.

“In the last two decades, the world has spent more than $196 billion trying to save people from death and disease in poor countries,” Associated Press reports. “But just what the world’s gotten for its money isn’t clear, according to two studies published Friday in the medical journal Lancet.”

The studies propose a range of reasons why the returns on internationally-funded health programs, in terms of improved health, have often been so poor.

Here’s an additional reason: The U.N.’s long-standing focus on the promotion ideologically based “reproductive health” programs, featuring initiatives like condom distribution and provision of abortions, has diverted health spending away from the provision of more useful medical services that would address the true health needs of people in developing countries.

While working in the late 1990s as a pro-life and pro-family journalist monitoring the United Nations, I spoke many times with representatives from developing countries who lamented that the foreign-funded health clinics in their countries were saddled with huge inventories of unwanted condoms whereas antibiotics and other necessary medicines were in short supply or unavailable completely.

The U.N.‘s focus on promotion of “reproductive health” progams hasn’t diminished since then; if anything, the U.N.‘s determination to impose abortion and artificial contraception on the developing world has strengthened over the last decade. Given the poor return the international community is getting on its investments in international health programs, maybe the time has come to abandon this unproductive and unhealthy approach.