Developing economies shrink as AIDS reduces workforce

The economies of poor countries hit by the AIDS epidemic are shrinking each year as millions of people are lost to the workforce through death or disability, the International Labour Organization said in a report this week.

The report, which was presented at the international AIDS conference this week, found that 36.5 million people of working age have HIV or AIDS and that by 2005 the global workforce will have lost 28 million workers to AIDS since the epidemic started.

Without access to life lengthening antiretroviral drugs two million workers with AIDS around the world will be too ill to work by 2005, up from 500 000 in 1995, it said.

More than 70% of HIV positive workers live in Africa. Kenya, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe each have more than a million HIV positive workers, Nigeria has 2.4 million, and South Africa has 3.7 million, it said.

The report found that the rate of economic growth in the 50 countries surveyed—35 in sub-Saharan Africa, eight in Latin America, five in Asia, and the United States and Russia—slowed by 0.2% a year from 1992 to 2000 as a result of death or disability related to AIDS. It said this decrease was equivalent to about £14bn ($25bn; €21bn) a year.

“By causing illness and death of workers, the HIV/AIDS epidemic reduces the stock of skills and experience of the labour force and this loss in human capital is a direct threat to goals for poverty eradication and sustainable development,” the report says.

Absenteeism and loss of experience and technical skills resulting from illness and death of key workers, as well as depleted savings and excess spending on health care, were also a drain on resources.

The report said that some governments had drafted “enlightened legislation” to counteract the impact of AIDS on the workforce and production, and it urged more governments to take similar steps. A Cambodian law on prevention and control, for example, obliges enterprises and public bodies to provide education programmes in the workplace on the prevention of AIDS. Romania has passed legislation banning discrimination against employees and job seekers with HIV or AIDS.

The workplace has proved the ideal place for education and dissemination of information.

“Many firms have concluded that the direct and indirect costs of inaction are far greater than the costs of treatment,” the report said.

Thailand runs programmes in the workplace to encourage condom use among migrant women working in factories, as many of the women believed that only sex workers were infected by HIV.

The report said the private sector was also active in HIV and AIDS programmes and gave as an example the Dutch beer company Heineken, which for 10 years has provided HIV prevention programmes for workers in central Africa and since 2001 has also provided antiretrovirals for workers.