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HEALTH-AFRICA: Making Policies for AIDS in the Workplace, Commonplace

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Mar 6 2007 (IPS) - With AIDS cutting a swathe through Africa’s workforce, there is an urgent need for employers to set up policies that support HIV-positive staff – and ensure they are not victims of stigma. But, it’s a need that often goes unaddressed.

With AIDS cutting a swathe through Africa’s workforce, there is an urgent need for employers to set up policies that support HIV-positive staff – and ensure they are not victims of stigma. But, it’s a need that often goes unaddressed.

In fact, “some employers are training two people on the same job” in anticipation of the toll which HIV may take on workers, said Khama Rogo, co-ordinator of ‘HIV/AIDS in the Workplace’: a World Bank programme.

“These are resources that can be saved with HIV/AIDS workplace policies in place: we have data that shows that when workers infected with HIV/AIDS are taken care of, they do not need to take sick leave any more,” he told IPS at a workshop that wrapped up in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, earlier this month.

The event brought together World Bank staff from 27 African countries to discuss the effects of HIV/AIDS in workplaces across the continent.

While Sub-Saharan Africa contains some 10 percent of the world’s population, it is home to more than 60 percent of people who have contracted the AIDS virus, according to the United Nations. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) notes further that nine out of every ten of those living with HIV/AIDS are adults in the prime of their working lives.

In it’s ‘Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work’, the ILO lays out ten principles to serve as a basis for workplace policy; these focus on issues such as discrimination against HIV-positive workers, adapting the workplace to meet the health needs of employees, and ensuring that those with the virus do not suffer termination of employment.

The principles also highlight the fact that policy should not only focus on those who have contracted HIV: “The social partners are in a unique position to promote prevention efforts through information and education, and support changes in attitudes and behaviour.”

In certain instances, steps towards an AIDS policy have been taken in African workplaces; however, much remains to be done.

“We are asking our members to develop their own policies that are non-discriminatory in terms of promotion and access to medical facilities, and requiring that all records of employees are kept confidential. Only 30 percent of the members have done it; the rest are in the process of doing it,” Charles Nyang’ute, in charge of the HIV/AIDS programme at the Federation of Kenya Employers, told IPS.

“Way before the disease was declared a national disaster, we had issued a code of conduct to our members to manage the situation, including discrimination and stigma.”

AIDS was declared a public health emergency in Kenya in 1999. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS puts adult HIV prevalence in the East African country at 6.1 percent.

Activists say that AIDS policies for the Kenyan workplace should not be voluntary.

“As long as we have just a handful of employers embracing policies that are friendly to those infected with HIV/AIDS, the rights of many more workers living with the disease will still be abused. We need all employers to be compelled to establish these regulations,” said Dorothy Onyango, executive director of Women Fighting AIDS in Kenya.

The activists are also campaigning for the ‘HIV/AIDS Protection and Control Bill’, signed into law last year, to be printed out in local languages and distributed to all communities. The law carries penalties for those who discriminate against HIV-positive persons, or deny them employment because of their status.

The difficulties of putting a workplace programme into effect are shown by the World Bank’s own experience.

This organisation currently offers its 15,000 employees and their families voluntary testing and counseling, antiretroviral drugs and medication for the opportunistic diseases that prey on those with HIV/AIDS.

But of the 300 to 400 employees who are infected, just 10 percent have taken advantage of this treatment, said Ana Maria Espinoza, a senior medical officer at the World Bank.

“We want people in need of treatment to come for it. But we have to fight stigma so that sick people are not afraid to access the life saving medicines,” she added.

According to the bank’s website, efforts are underway this year to make more employees and dependents aware of the assistance provided by the organisation to those with HIV/AIDS – and to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of these services being accessed.