Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Wall Street Journal - August 7, 2002
Mark Schoofs, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The formal announcement, made in a telephone news briefing led by Anglo American Chief Executive Tony Trahar, follows a protracted seesaw battle in which the company has stalled and even backtracked on its plans to provide the expensive therapy. "It's for real this time," said one company official who had fought for the drugs to be made available and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's all systems go."
Anglo's move, which comes as other large African employers are considering similar plans, follows public pressure on companies to combat the AIDS pandemic and an internal realization that the cost of the disease may outweigh the cost of treatment.
With 134,000 employees in southern Africa, Anglo American is one of the largest employers on that continent. Anglo estimates that roughly a quarter of its African work force is infected with HIV , the virus that causes AIDS. The company, which has headquarters in London, reported $3.3 billion (Ç3.36 billion) in operating profit for 2001.
HIV is costing AngloGold, which is majority-owned by Anglo American, about $5 to $6 an ounce, AngloGold CEO Bobby Godsell said. If left unmanaged those costs could soar to $9 an ounce, he said.
Mr. Godsell said he didn't know how the AIDS drug cocktails, known as antiretroviral therapy, would affect that cost. Even at steeply discounted prices, the different cocktails can still cost between $800 and $2,000 per patient per year, but other costs, such as hospitalization, absenteeism, and retraining of replacement workers, are expected to plummet because the drugs delay the onset of full-blown AIDS.
Anglo didn't provide specific timetables for the rollout of the complicated AIDS therapy. Mr. Trahar said it could take a year for the drugs to be made available across the group, which has companies active in gold, platinum, and coal mining, as well as forestry products. The time would be needed to train health-care providers and set protocols to minimize the emergence of resistance to the drugs, company officials said.
The company also said that it wouldn't treat the wives and dependents of its mineworkers. Several Anglo operations, such as its gold-mining arm AngloGold, still rely on an apartheid-era migrant-labor system in which men work on the mines but their wives and families live in impoverished rural areas. This labor system, which many AIDS experts believe accelerated the spread of HIV in South Africa, makes it especially difficult and costly for the company to provide medical care to family members of its workers. "We certainly think the state should come to the party in terms of providing these drugs" to Anglo dependents and others without access to medical insurance, Mr. Trahar said.
Write to Mark Schoofs at mark.schoofs@wsj.com
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