CATEGORY:HEALTH
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Friday December 01,2006


HIV/AIDS IS HAVING a crippling effect on the workforce of many countries, a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) for World Aids Day says.

The ILO said HIV/Aids killed almost 3.5 million people of working age in 2005.

In addition, more than a million jobs are lost each year to the disease, the bulk of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a speech to mark World Aids Day, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said more must be done to encourage frank and open discussion of HIV/Aids.

All politicians must consider themselves personally accountable for stopping the spread of the disease, Mr Annan said, as must every individual.

"It requires every one of us to help bring Aids out of the shadows and spread the message that silence is death."

As events are held around the world, South Africa is expected to announce details of a five-year programme to tackle the crisis.

Its government has in the past been accused of not doing enough to fight the HIV/Aids pandemic.

More than five million South Africans are infected with the virus, making it one of the world's worst affected countries.

BBC Southern Africa correspondent Peter Biles says Aids policy has undergone a dramatic change, with the government now committed to providing more antiretroviral (AVR) treatment.

In its report, the ILO calls for sustained action to improve access to AVR treatments to cut mortality rates.

Without this, it estimates that the cumulative loss to the global workforce from the virus could rise to 45 million by 2010 and almost double again by 2020.

ILO estimates that more than 36 million people of working age are now living with the virus, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa.


This has had a damaging effect on the availability of labour in the worst affected countries and has stunted economic growth.

The ILO conducted research into the impact of the virus on 43 countries with some of the highest rates of infection in the world.

More than 70% of these countries were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Based on its findings, it has estimated that 1.3 million new jobs have been lost every year between 1992 and 2004 because of the virus.

This, in turn, reduced annual economic growth by an average of 0.5% over the period and 0.7% for sub-Saharan countries.

"HIV/Aids is adding an enormous burden to countries struggling to emerge from poverty," said Odile Frank, one of the report's authors.

"We need more employment opportunities for people with HIV/Aids and an end to discrimination against people with the virus to help them to secure work."

More than two million children around the world are now living with Aids while those aged 15-24 account for half of new infections.

The ILO said many children were forced to seek employment because they were living in extreme poverty, while their parents had either died from Aids or were too sick to work.

The rise in child labour is reducing educational standards and making it harder for children to get productive jobs when reaching working age.

Other children found themselves working in unregulated industries such as the sex trade which exposed them to being infected.

The ILO said increased access to ARV treatments could significantly reduce the impact on the global workforce.

"The prospect of averting between one-fifth and one-quarter of potential new losses to the labour force should serve as a powerful incentive to target the workplace as a major entry point to achieve universal access to ARVs," the report concluded.



Reprinted from BBCnews.com