AFRICANEWS

Southern Africa

HIV/AIDS reverses gains in SADC economies

HIV/AIDS

The spread of HIV/AIDS in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has eroded the countries' skilled labour base and have diverted much-needed resources to AIDS prevention and treatment programmes. But governments and companies are starting to tackle the problem head-on.

The ravaging HIV/AIDS pandemic in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) states is threatening to reverse the significant strides that SADC has made towards regional integration and will disrupt sustainable development in the region if the infection rate continues to increase, recent research findings by expert groups have found.

From the regional anchor, South Africa, to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); from the economically booming Botswana to the struggling economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe and the desperately poor and flood-hit Mozambique; the statistics of those infected paint a bleak picture of the future of the region as far as its human resource profile is concerned.

In its April 2000 report, “Can Africa Claim The 21st Century,” the World Bank fears that HIV/AIDS will erode the much-needed skilled manpower base that governments and the private sector have spent huge amount of resources to train.

Since regional integration of SADC will also depend on the free movement of labour in the region, the high death rate due to AIDS among adults in the productive age will worsen the skilled manpower shortage in the SADC region. The report also says that resources SADC states would use for economic development that is essential for regional integration will instead be diverted to AIDS treatment programmes.

Another report, “SADC Investor Survey: Complex Terrain,” researched and released in November 2000 by BusinessMap, a respected South African-based international business consultant, states that AIDS is adversely affecting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the SADC region.

In Zambia, the survey shows that the AIDS crisis is compounding the problem of a low skills base in a country that critically needs skilled manpower to run the recently liberalised economy. It cites HIV/AIDS as a serious inhibiting element to investment growth in Zambia.

“The impact of HIV/AIDS has compounded skills shortages, and has imposed additional costs via both benefits and management energy,” it says.

For Botswana, the survey notes that the single greatest challenge facing the country is the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which at 26 percent of the country's small population (1.6 million people) is not only eating up the much-needed labour supply for industry, but is also decimating the small market crucial for Botswana's continued economic boom.

In South Africa, where the government is currently embroiled in a controversy with scientists over the question of what causes AIDS and on the withholding of distribution of life-saving anti-AIDS retrovirals, UNAIDS estimates that by 2010, at the current infection rate, there will be 1.7 deaths per 100.

In Botswana and Zimbabwe, United Nations AIDS Control Programme (UNAIDS) figures indicate that an alarming 26 percent of the population is infected with HIV, others with full-blown AIDS.

In South Africa and Zambia, the infection rate is put at 19 percent, while Mozambique, Mauritius and Angola have relatively lower rates that fall below an estimated 14 percent.

The impact this epidemic is having on the fragile economies of SADC states is enormous and the human cost of this disease is incalculable, according to the survey. The money spent on health care programmes for the sick and person-hours companies lose due perpetual absenteeism is too high for the fledgling SADC economies to sustain.

Both the economic and humanitarian implications are severely bad for SADC countries, which are on a fast track towards integration in the global economy, says the survey.

The survey points out AIDS is most devastating in areas of mining, energy, transport, telecommunications, financial services and tourism, the core sectors that are key to regional integration.

Realising that the AIDS epidemic is posing serious danger to the region, SADC ministers of Health met in Botswana in July of last year with World Health Organisation (WHO) top officials and resolved that SADC governments should declare the epidemic a regional disaster.

“In one country in SADC, one hotel chain lost five of its 11 general managers to illness in the past five years,” says the survey. “Other companies report similar levels of loss but say the are dealing with the situation by building HIV/AIDS related mortality projections of between 20 and 30 percent.

“Further spread of HIV could completely undermine investment in the SADC region,” says the survey. “Coherent and effective strategies to slow down the rate of infection is critical.”

In a region where traditionally, extended family support systems used to take care of illnesses as common problems of the family, but no longer due to high poverty levels, only such carefully planned efforts could work to arrest the scourge.

For instance, Botswana's biggest diamond company Debswana announced in early March that it would begin to subsidise the supply of life-prolonging drugs for its HIV-positive employees. The company said it would begin immediately to pay up to 90 percent of the cost of drugs for any of its employees, or their spouses, who carry the HIV that causes AIDS.

The survey recommends that measures to contain the spread of the disease, particularly by raising public awareness of the disease, must be put in place. Botswana and Namibia are said to have strong stigmas, slowing down efforts to combat the disease.

Zambia and Uganda have pushed forward public awareness campaigns to educate people about how to prevent catching and spreading the disease and how to care for those affected by HIV/AIDS.

In Uganda, the personal involvement of President Yoweri Museveni has paid dividends, with the infection rate dropping from 14 percent (the highest in Africa a decade ago) to an estimated seven percent at present.

In Zambia, after a vigorous AIDS campaign, the HIV incidence rate dropped from 19 percent to 16 percent, according to Zambia's Ministry of Health statistics for last year.

New investors in the recently privatised mines have responded to the AIDS threat by initiating public awareness programmes, says the report.

Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) has began a voluntary HIV test project for its workers and other people in the mine community so that the company could plan the company's health care programme in response to the epidemic. The Mineworkers' Union of Zambia and the government have supported the move as long it would remain voluntary and that test results would not harm those found to be HIV positive.

But these examples are of little relevance to countries that are unable to address the subject publicly, says the report.

Given the extent of the AIDS problem in the SADC countries, it is clear from the various reports that AIDS represents the greatest and intractable challenge to labour market stability in the region and consequently on regional integration efforts.

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