THE STATE OF BUSINESS AND AIDS

Business is making strong progress in partnering with governments, multilateral organizations and communities to support the global fight against HIV/AIDS. Workplace prevention and education programs are also now widespread, but efforts to collaborate with suppliers, fully utilize senior leadership and extend interventions in emerging markets still need an effective response.

A baseline survey and interview program conducted by the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (GBC) and Booz & Company has, for the first time, established a basis to look at the scope and depth of the response being made by the global business community.

The study highlights status and variations in business response by region, industry and enterprise scale. Increasingly, business sees HIV/AIDS as a strategic as well as social responsibility issue, managing programs and resources based on bottom line impact. However an informed sense of urgency must be maintained – The State of Business and HIV/AIDS (2006) provides an important new resource to do that.

The Bigger Picture
As AIDS continues to have a devastating impact around the world, business is responding to the pandemic by adopting multifaceted strategies to confront the disease in the workplace and community, by partnering and raising awareness.

This baseline report provides a comprehensive analysis of the status of businesses’ response, highlights areas where most progress has been made, identifies where barriers are encountered, and asks what business should do next.

Today, 40 million people live with HIV/AIDS. The global labor force has lost more than 28 million people as a result of AIDS, without further intervention this number could grow to 74 million by 2015.

» Read The State of Business and HIV/AIDS (2006)