Businesses AIDS strategies need revisiting - SABCOHA

South Africa's Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (SABCOHA) says certain business sectors are still feeling the effects of the pandemic, despite having workplace initiatives in place.

Citing the findings of the 2005 Bureau for Economic Research (BER) survey, SABCOHA director Brad Mears told PlusNews the mining, manufacturing, transport and finance industries were especially hard-hit, "but this would be expected in businesses such as these, which are both capital and labour intensive, and usually have the largest numbers of people in their employ."

Although transport and mining concerns had been more directly affected by AIDS, losses were mainly incurred in the financial sector when HIV-positive clients and staff became ill or died before paying off loans and mortgages.

The BER survey, 'The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Selected Business Sectors in South Africa', also pointed out that companies employing predominantly semi- and unskilled workers had been harder hit by the disease than companies with mainly highly skilled workers.

"It does raise questions about what might have been done wrong with current anti-AIDS interventions, and calls for business to monitor, measure and evaluate the situation more closely than before," Mears said.

An estimated 81 percent of financial services companies, 60 percent of mines and around 50 percent of manufacturing and transport firms had AIDS policies in place, but apart from mining and financial services companies, very few firms had conducted research to assess the impact of the disease on their labour force and production costs.

"All businesses are advised to examine their current strategies more closely at this time and, depending on what is revealed, they should then look at ways of reconfiguring their approaches," Mears suggested.

SABCOHA also highlighted public-private partnerships as a means of instituting better HIV prevention and treatment initiatives in workplaces.

Access the BER survey: www.ber.sun.ac.za