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AIDS and business a cause for concern - report

    JOHANNESBURG

    South African companies are starting to feel the impact of HIV/AIDS and urgently need to speed up programmes to deal with the pandemic, an independent survey has found.

    The research was conducted by the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (SABCOHA) among 1,006 firms, of which nine percent reported a "significant" adverse impact on their business, while 43 percent only saw this happening in five years' time.

    In a statement SABCOHA said small and medium enterprises were a vital source of jobs, and in a country with an unemployment rate of over 30 percent, this was a major cause for concern.

    SABCOHA also noted that most firms had failed to respond to the epidemic, with only a quarter of all those surveyed having a formal HIV/AIDS policy, while less than a fifth had a voluntary counselling and testing programme.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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