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The international path to business fighting HIVThe economic implications of HIV/AIDS are disturbing, since most HIV-infected persons worldwide are in the productive age group of 15 to 49 years. The gross domestic product (GDP) of high prevalence countries in Africa is decreasing constantly with negative consequences for markets, investments and progress. The World Bank has researched that per capita income and life expectancy in African countries have fallen to the level of the 1960s. Anybody who wants to do business in Africa cannot ignore these facts. It was only in the second half of the 1990s, when multinational companies began discussing the economic impact of HIV/AIDS, that the most active among them formed the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS in 1997. Two years later, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged enterprises worldwide to live up to their corporate social responsibility. He initiated the UN Global Compact as a network of predominantly international companies, actively promoting among other topics HIV/AIDS workplace programs. The United Nations announced the struggle against AIDS to be objective no 6 of the Millennium Development Goals. Another network – the World Economic Forum – also took up the struggle against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and, together with the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, created the Global Health Initiative. Promoting public private partnerships (PPP), the German government has established a concept for respective projects with the private sector. In 2000, GTZ started a project financed by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development with DaimlerChrysler in South Africa. GTZ invested technical expertise in the project, while DaimlerChrysler shouldered the operational costs of the HIV/AIDS workplace program. Cooperation with other companies followed. Two years later, the ACCA regional project took up the concept and experiences and adapted them to the situation of smaller national companies and business associations. The project is now mainly responsible for all issues arising in the field of health promotion and HIV at the workplace, and cooperates intensively with GTZ’s HIV/AIDS section and health division. Here you will find further information on these organizations:
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