Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - November 20, 2005
Janette Bennett

The company - the biggest private employer in East London - this week launched a two-year pilot project that takes HIV-Aids support, care and treatment into small and medium enterprises (SMEs), long regarded as the weak link in tackling the epidemic.

The project will reach 1000 employees of 15 to 20 companies and their 5000 dependants.

"This is a global manufacturing plant in a small city," says Dr Clifford Panter, DaimlerChrysler SA's corporate health services manager. "There are great corporate social responsibility obligations for a multinational company operating in our environment.

"We're approached for assistance all the time. Our assessment is that we should do fewer projects with a greater impact."

This pilot project is a first for a big South African-based company. As a member of the Global Business Coalition on HIV-Aids, DaimlerChrysler SA is "committed to scaling-up access to care and treatment using the resources of business to address problems in society".

It is intended that the project will take 1000 HIV-infected people who have long been waiting for anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment from the government and treat them in the private sector, using project funds.

About 85% of SMEs don't have even a basic HIV-Aids programme. But they employ more than half of the South Africans in formal, private sector jobs.

"We've established a network of general practitioners and trained people to provide care and treatment, including ARVs, psychosocial and nutritional support, and treatment of opportunistic diseases," says Panter.

"The pilot project will treat about 600 people over two years. Over and above this, our network and resources allow us to treat another 1000 people."

So far, the state has provided ARVs to 70000 of the 400000 people the South African HIV Clinicians' Society estimates require them.

"At this rate, it will take us 30 years to reach our target," Panter says. "But we know the drugs are in the depots. The slow roll-out is mostly due to human resources and institutional limitations."

Panter - named Best Global HIV-Aids Workplace Programme Manager by the National Occupational Safety Association last year - has laid down a challenge to the government.

He told an Eastern Cape Aids Council meeting this week: donate the drugs to us and we will distribute them as part of a comprehensive treatment [programme] in the private sector.

"They didn't say 'no'," he says.

He will continue pushing, with his project partners Border Kei Chamber of Business and DEG, the German development finance institution in the KFW Bank Group.

"We're not referring people to state facilities; we don't want to make the queue longer. We'll work with public sector clinics that are not yet distributing ARVs to prepare them to distribute them."

The project partners have established a R4.4-million trust fund to which DaimlerChrysler SA has contributed an initial 58% and DEG 36%.

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