When was the last time a US politician stood up and praised the Population Fund's good works? You can't have population without sex or curb the rising global birth rate with the slogan "Just say no." Sex is all over the air waves and movies and advertising campaigns are full of it. More than one politician has been caught with his pants down. Still the same old partisan political hypocrisy persists.

The Fund has been denying ever since Raul Salas of the Philippines was its first director that it financed abortion programs anywhere, or that, in its terms, abortion is an acceptable form of birth control. Notwithstanding its widespread practice, including in Japan, where a woman may have multiple abortions without stigma.

UNFPA's principal business, overlooked in Washington, is the promotion of sensible, healthful reproductive practices. Just this week, its sister agency Unicef began a project in the African state of Mali that will save the lives of thousands of young mothers and their new-born children. UNFPA and the World Health Organization are partners in this program, which is being funded by, among other charities, Save the Children (US), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Ronald McDonald House.

Great credit goes, too, to the pharmaceutical companies Becton, Dickinson and Bio Farma, which are donating 9 million units of a life-saving vaccine and a new, easy immunization delivery system that can be used by relatively untrained persons in remote places where professional health workers are few or nonexistent.

The vaccine counters maternal and neonatal tetanus, which is estimated by Unicef to take the lives of 30,000 mothers and 200,000 newborn babies in 57 developing countries. Carol Bellamy, the head of Unicef, says the aim of the partners in the Maternal and Nenatal Tetanus Elimination Initiative as it's called is to conquer the disease by 2005. To be fully protected a woman of child-bearing age needs 3 shots of the vaccine, which now is being administered by the innovative BD Uniject system, in which the tetanus is injected through an inch-long needle.

UN officials say tetanus will never be completely eradicated, because the spores can survive outside the human body and even be transmitted without any human contact. The maternal and neonatal variety is generally transmitted where there is poor hygiene during childbirth and the spores then are able to reach an infant's umbilical cord. Severe pain, convulsions and coma lead to death in 3 days.

In the Malian rural districts of Bla and Bougoni, the immunization teams targeted 118,000 females aged 14 to 45. Hailing the participation of the pharma companies, Bellamy said, "This is an excellent example of the partnership between the public and private sectors." The partnership is also in play in the fight against AIDS, Africa's worst scourge by far.