The willingness of multi-national companies with large scale operations in Africa to provide antiretroviral medication to its employees has been thrown into doubt by suggestions that the mining company Anglo-American is ready to abandon a feasibility study to provide HIV medication to its African employees. At the same time, Coca-Cola has been criticised for providing HIV-treatments to only “1.5%” of its African workforce by New York based treatment activists Healthgap.
Although official confirmation has yet to be issued by Anglo-American, the Wall Street Journal has reported that “people at the mining company familiar with the situation” say Anglo-American is abandoning its plans to examine the possibility of giving its African employees free HIV treatments.
Anglo-American estimate that 20% of its 125,000-strong African workforce are HIV-positive and was last year praised when it revealed plans for investigating the feasibility of providing life-long HIV treatments to its employees, who are often migrant workers living in barrack-like conditions at company’s South African mines, separated from their families. In September last year Brian Brink, a senior vice president at Anglo American said: “The one thing that is going to turn [the AIDS] crisis around is treatment…the cost of the therapy will be outweighed by the benefits”, comments which the mining multi-national now seems to be regretting.
There is speculation that Anglo American will advocate an industry-wide HIV-treatment scheme later this week. However, it is known that the company has been discouraged by the attitude of the South African government towards HIV treatments, as it had been hoping that they would shoulder the cost of providing treatments to their employees’ families. South African treatment activists are pessimistic about the possibility of an industry-wide scheme emerging. Alan Whiteside of the University of Natal, who has written widely on the economics of AIDS in South Africa is quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying: “If Anglo can’t do it…who will?”
South African treatment activists had been hoping that multinationals would accept the responsibility of providing treatments to their employees and families. Companies involved in diamond and gold mining, which need particularly specialised staff, seemed the most likely candidates to introduce treatment programmes, particularly as a study by the merchant bankers ING Barings suggested that AIDS will increase the costs of South African mining companies by 25% by 2005 and 45% by 2010. The Botswanan mining company Debswana is already covering 90% 0f the cost of HIV treatments for its employees and their families after it concluded that the company would collapse unless took steps to counter AIDS related mortality and illness amongst its highly skilled workforce.
Multinationals operating in other economic markets also have HIV programmes. In September last year Coca-Cola joined Shell Oil and Puma in backing a report calling for greater participation by business in HIV education, prevention and treatment in Africa. However, Coca-Cola’s record is being criticised by Healthgap, which along with Act- Up New York is organising a demonstration outside the annual shareholder meeting of the multinational in New York on 17 April. Coca-Cola has declared that it will provide HIV medication to any of its 1,500 employees in Africa. The company also uses its marketing and distribution networks to disseminate HIV education material and is a corporate partner of UNAIDS.
However, Healthgap is criticising the company for not extending its treatment plans to include its distribution and bottling contractors which employ close to 100,000, indirectly making Coca-Cola one of the largest employers in Africa.