Wall Street Journal - June 19, 2001
Robert Block, Staff Reporter

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- German-American car maker DaimlerChrysler AG's South African subsidiary has launched perhaps the country's most far-reaching corporate program to manage AIDS among employees and dependents, including providing free antiretroviral drugs to infected workers and their families.

"We believe this is something that can be done and we would like to be the role model," said Christoph Koepke, chief executive of DaimlerChrysler South Africa Pty. Ltd., at a news conference.

It includes an annual $3,750 (4,351 euros) AIDS insurance benefit that will cover the cost of anti-AIDS drugs, for 4,445 employees and their families, a total of 23,000 people in three South African cities. The company also is budgeting an additional $1.9 million annually to cover any shortfall in insurance benefits. The plan also will cover monitoring of treatment, has local trade union approval and is being supported by the German government, which has provided some funds and technical assistance.

The level of funding and the size of the program means DaimlerChrysler is now one of the largest companies to provide AIDS drugs to its workers in sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 million people are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. South Africa has the highest infection rate on the continent, with an estimated 4.7 million people already infected with the AIDS virus and 1,700 new infections occurring daily. According to the international studies, 13% of South Africa's work force had the AIDS virus last year, but that figure is expected to climb to as much as 25% by the end of 2002, costing companies millions of dollars through absenteeism, sickness payments and loss of skilled workers.

Mr. Koepke said DaimlerChrysler believed it had to take urgent action for the survival of the local company as well as its work force. "A headache pill is not going to solve this issue," he said. Until now, the only other major international corporate player to have implemented a similar program has been Ford Motor Co., which last year won an award from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for its AIDS education and prevention program in South Africa.

"Irrespective of the funding mechanism there is a policy commitment to early anti-retroviral treatment," said Dr. Clifford Panter, the coordinator of the program. "AIDS treatment is now as much company policy as a commitment to innovative car design and safety," he added.

Apart from the two motor industry giant's, private business response to the AIDS epidemic in South Africa has been until now considered by AIDS activists as poor. Anglo American PLC, the London-based mining conglomerate with huge operations in Africa, for months has been talking about plans to provide AIDS drugs to its African workers and their spouses, but has so far failed to implement anything beyond a few pilot projects.

However there are signs that might be beginning to change. Gold Fields Ltd., South Africa's second largest gold mining company, has been quietly implementing an AIDS treatment program that it has said it will unveil next month for public scrutiny.

"Corporate South Africa is finally beginning to see the impact of the AIDS and starting to realize that with drug prices coming down it's more cost effective to manage HIV than to wait for workers to die or to dismiss them," said Mark Heywood, the head of the AIDS Law Project, an AIDS activist group.

Write to Robert Block at bobby.block@wsj.com1

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