Business gears up against AIDS

Local and international businesses in Malawi are taking up the baton in the country's struggle against HIV/AIDS by providing free treatment to their employees and tackling stigma. A coalition of 15 companies in the tobacco, energy and transport sector as well as banks, are working to draw other private sector parties into the workplace anti-AIDS programme. According to Rose Ng'oma, programme director of the Malawi Business Coalition Against AIDS, the pandemic was affecting industry's most productive members, who fell within the 20-45 age group. She noted, however, that the biggest challenge for the programme was to break the silence which surrounded the disease. "There is a lot of stigma and discrimination and we want HIV/AIDS to be treated like any other disease," Agence France-Presse quoted Ng'oma as saying.