The World Health Organization, an embattled U.N. agency, has been fending off malaria and AIDS malpractice allegations and generic drug scandals most of this year. Yet this poor track record did not dissuade the Minneapolis Star Tribune from arguing in an Oct. 13 editorial that WHO deserves more money to fund its quixotic and rapidly disintegrating plan to treat 3 million AIDS victims by 2005 (" '3 by 5' / A daft but crucial dream").

Instead, Congress and health observers should be asking a simple question: How is it that what should be the world's premier health institution can be failing so badly in health?

Two U.N. agencies--UNICEF and WHO--bore the brunt of criticism earlier this year when health experts charged that supplying chloroquine in African countries had caused an increase in malaria deaths. The drug, a mainstay in anti-malaria programs for the past 50 years, is starting to show failure due to drug resistance. In Ethiopia and Sudan, failure rates reach as high as 88 percent.

Regrettably, WHO's Roll Back Malaria campaign, launched in 1998, has been a dismal failure. Pledging to halve malaria cases by the year 2010 and demanding hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve success, the program has actually promoted a rise in malaria deaths.

The WHO also endured a scandal-plagued summer over AIDS treatment. In a rush to meet the fast-approaching deadlines of 3 by 5, WHO endorsed the widespread use of knock-off AIDS drugs manufactured in India. As it turns out, several of the drugs approved by WHO for AIDS treatment have not met important bio-equivalence tests!

In addition, during the high-profile Bangkok AIDS conference this summer, allegations of "Enron-like numbers" from big media like the New York Times were used to describe treatment figures ascribed by the WHO to 3 by 5.

Now, three years after the drugs' approval, treatments of unknown efficacy are in use in the field by health care officials who are ill-equipped to pull them, offer alternative treatments, or even inform their patients they might be receiving bad drugs.

Worse, the possibility that these shoddy practices could facilitate future HIV resistance--thus worsening the deadly disease--has given health experts around the globe grave concerns.

The WHO is the trend-setter for international health policy and as such deserves the closest scrutiny. Citizens are starting to ask if U.S. taxpayer dollars--about 23 percent of the agency's overall budget--are being well-spent.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog organization, sent a scathing letter to congressional leaders this month calling for an investigation into the WHO's policies. "CAGW believes Congress should investigate this issue further, particularly whether WHO's drug 'approval' process is legitimate."

Congress must investigate the mismanagement of tax dollars in Geneva. In addition to WHO's malaria and AIDS mess, there have been dubious policy decisions taken with measles, obesity, substitute milk products and tobacco, among others.

More than a few hundred million dollars has been wasted so far. And, meanwhile, many lives have needlessly been lost.

Roger Bate is a visiting fellow of AEI and a director of Africa Fighting Malaria.