InterPress News Service (IPS); Tuesday, 11 February 1997.
Gustavo Capdevila

The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) actually presents a threat to the world economy, because the loss of such generations could paralyse the progress of emerging markets in Latin America and Asia, he told the recent Davos gathering of members of the business community and high-level officials from donor countries.

Piot underlined the need for prevention, providing examples such as the experience of one bank in Zambia, which has lost a majority of its executives to AIDS, or the armed forces in Uganda, at least 40 percent of the members of which have tested HIV-positive.

He also asked who will teach the children in Malawi, where more than 30 percent of schoolteachers - a group not easily replaced - are HIV-positive.

The most dramatic examples of the impact of AIDS can be found in Africa, where the disease has spread like a forest fire over the past 10 years. Piot warned that the impact of AIDS on the economy in east Africa also would eventually be seen in eastern Europe and in the developing countries of Asia and Latin America, and that the impact in southeast Asia would be as severe as in Africa.

Economists with the U.S. firm McGraw-Hill predict that by the turn-of-the-century, AIDS' impact on the world economy will be equivalent to four percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, or the total economy of India.

At January meetings with business executives and officials from donor countries in Washington, and last week in Davos, Piot pointed out that if AIDS maintains its current rate of expansion, a large proportion of young adults in eastern Europe, India, southeast Asia and Latin America will never be able to acquire a refrigerator, telephone or car.

A total of 1.5 million people died of AIDS-related diseases in 1996, a figure equivalent to one-fourth of all AIDS victims since the epidemic broke out more than 15 years ago.

Those carrying out international anti-AIDS campaigns urge greater efforts by transnational companies in the communities where they are installed. The UN HIV/AIDS programmes stresses that firms should exercise their influence with public health officials, and apply health programmes on their own premises.

Piot highlighted programmes implemented by two mining companies, Gold Fields in South Africa and Rio Tinto in Zimbabwe, designed to protect their employees and the surrounding community from AIDS, efforts which have not meant additional expenditures for the firms.

The Anglo-Dutch company Unilever finances community education programmes, carried out in bars, schools and other meeting places in several developing countries. Another transnational, Shell Oil, contributes funding for the national HIV/AIDS education campaign in Botswana. The U.S. clothing company Levi Strauss is working on a broad AIDS education programme designed for its suppliers in southeast Asia.

The Indian Confederation of Industry has designed a programme of AIDS education and prevention. More than 100 firms, many of them transnationals, have taken part in the initiative.

Companies are in an ideal position to circulate prevention messages, thanks to their influence, marketing experience and distribution networks, Piot underlined.

He also pointed out the role of economic factors in the development of medical treatment programmes for HIV-positive individuals. While praising studies on the AIDS virus and research on medicine to treat the disease in affected individuals, he lamented that similar investment has not gone towards research into a vaccine.

Since 90 percent of those affected by the disease live in the developing world and lack any hope of accessing exorbitantly expensive existing treatment programmes, the only real hope lies in the discovery of a vaccine, which remains a distant dream, Piot maintained. (END/IPS/trd-sp/pc/dg/sw/97)

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