InterPress News Service (IPS) - July 24, 1998
Judith Achieng'

"Aids is bad for business," said Lucy Hunter of the Business Coalition of Botswana. "Most companies invest huge sums of money on training their staff, and will go to some lengths to protect them from being poached by rival companies, now Aids is on the scene, a bigger threat than any rival firm".

Hunter along with colleagues from eastern and southern Africa met here this week to discuss how to avert the looming crisis of shortage of manpower in workplace.

"Prevention is our only option. We can't talk about prevention being better than cure, because there is no cure," said Julius Namale of the Barclays Bank of Kenya Limited.

The three-day seminar, which examined employment policies mitigating fair treatment of infected employees, called for a common industrial code on Aids and employment, to govern issues such as review of medical aid and non discrimination in awarding employee benefits on the basis of HIV status.

"We are working with the private and public sectors to develop policies that apart from protecting company investments and human resource, will assure employees affected by the virus fair treatment by their employers," according to Rene Lowenson of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU).

Of the 31 million people infected globally with the deadly virus, nearly two thirds are in Africa, according to the latest figure released by the United Nations publication, UNAIDS.

Of the 31 million infected, two million die each year, 80 percent of the deaths being in sub-Saharan Africa. In Zimbabwe one out of four adults dies of AIDS while 43 percent of pregnant women in Botswana are HIV positive. In South Africa, 3 million people are infected.

"Africa is disproportionately affected by Aids," said Peter Lamptey of the New York-based Family Health International (FHI).

The meeting heard that 75 percent of all adult deaths in Africa are as a result of Aids, a vast majority in their productive ages of between 20 and 50 who would be developing their skills and contributing to the growth of their economies. Some success has, however, been recorded in Botswana. "This year, with relatively few HIV cases having progressed to Aids, the virus will cost companies 0.7 percent of their wage bill," says a study conducted by Botswana Business Coalition. "But five years from now, that will have increased seven-fold, bringing all health related costs to nearly 12 percent of their wage bill".

"Aids costs to households, workers, managers, companies, sectors and national economies is unimaginably huge in terms of human resource losses and costs," said Lamptey.

According to Hunter, a new study in Zimbabwe factories where the rate of new infections were cut by over one third at the cost of only 6 US Dollars, per employee per year, is proof that prevention education in the workplace actually works.

Some of the factories have offered their staff counselling about HIV and confidential testing, while others have offered the same with additional intensive education campaigns carried out by the factory workers themselves.

"One of the managers said his company spends much more on protective safety overalls which prevent much fewer deaths," she added.

The Barclays Bank of Kenya Limited emerged as one of such success stories. It reported a marked drop in demands on their medical services and a radical shift in employee attitudes towards HIV infected friends and colleagues.

"Discrimination has been replaced with support and solidarity," said Namale. However majority of examples presented at the meeting came from countries grouped in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which have already developed a legally binding code for companies on governing Aids in the workplace.

Major mining companies in the region have as a result of this, began to provide communities around the mines with Aids education and preventive materials like condoms and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases that accelerate the spread of the virus.

In Zimbabwe, owners of large commercial farms are working together with their workers to support the adoption of orphans within farm communities. There are reportedly half a million orphans in the southern African country and a million others forecast in the next decade.

Organisers of the seminar however, are disappointed that despite the code, majority of firms in the SADC region have not recognised it. "There is some success, but unfortunately it is too patchy. We would like to see many more firms do what the few companies are doing," said Lamptey.

The East Africa region on the other hand is yet to formulate a legal framework governing HIV and employment policies. "Little has been done in workplace policies on HIV despite the fact that the impact of the disease is clearly being seen in East African workplaces," said David Masika of the Nairobi-based Kenya National Social Security Fund.(END/IPS/JA/MN/98)

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