Seven international companies join global fight against AIDS
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British Medical Journal, Dec 2003; 327: 1368-c - 0.
Seven major international companies have joined forces with the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to boost
prevention and treatment of HIV infection and AIDS among their
workers and their families in Asia and Africa.
The initiative, dubbed the global business coalition, comes af-
ter years of companies seeing their workforces decimated by the
killer disease, and it won praise from US health secretary Tommy
Thompson, who was in Nairobi for its official launch last
Wednesday.
The companies involved are South Africas electrical utility
Eskom, the mining group Anglo American, the US oil giant Chevron
Texaco, the US-German automobile group DaimlerChrysler, the
Dutch brewer Heineken, the French construction firm Lafarge, and
Indias Tata Steel. The companies said they would use their fa-
cilities to expand HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention in the
workplace.
It was the latest so called public-private partnership created
to address neglected health problems of the developing worldthe
subject of a conference in Geneva last week, organised by the
Global Forum for Health Research.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently donated $200m
(£116m; 165m) to the National Institutes for Health to research
vaccines, drugs, and treatments for neglected diseases and
health problems.