PHA-Exchange> Seven international companies join global fight against AIDS (E+V)

[Aviva]

British Medical journal

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 after 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 Africa’s 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 India’s Tata
Steel. The companies said they would use their
facilities 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 world—the 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.