Minister of International Development Anne Kristin Sydnes

Development, HIV/AIDS and the workplace

Your Excellency,

Ladies and gentlemen,

HIV/AIDS is not merely a health problem – it is a development catastrophe.

I have lost count of all the times I have repeated this sentence in the 18 months I have been Minster of International Development.

But there are good reasons for repeating this observation. There are good reasons why the Institute for Applied Social Science, on behalf of Aidsnet, has organized a conference which focuses on the impact of a single disease on the business and working community. There are good reasons why HIV/AIDS is at the top of the international development agenda.

According to UNAIDS, an estimated 58 million people were infected by HIV at the end of 2000. Ninety per cent of these people were living in developing countries. Twenty-two million have already died. Thirty-six million carry the virus. The number is expected to be close to 40 million when UNAIDS publishes its next annual survey, two months from now.

The impact on children and adolescents is staggering. The disease has orphaned at least 13 million children. In 16 African countries, more than 10 per cent – in some cases over 25 per cent – of the adult population are infected. In eight of them – most of them among Norway’s development partners in Southern and Eastern Africa – the adult infection rate is above 15 per cent. In these countries no less than 37 per cent of today’s 15 year olds are expected to die of AIDS before they reach the age of 30. Try to imagine the impact!

These figures represent challenges on almost every level of society. – Challenges to stop the further spread of this epidemic through preventive measures. Challenges to address the personal and social consequences of high infection and mortality rates. Challenges to health systems, trying to meet growing and very legitimate demands for access to treatment and care – for millions of people literally a question of life or death.

The Norwegian Government has stepped up its efforts on several fronts in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We have doubled our contributions to UN efforts to combat the epidemic. We have also increased our funding through bilateral assistance and NGOs.

We have initiated an AIDS project – of which Aidsnet is one part – encompassing all voluntary organizations working on HIV/AIDS issues. A second part – my Aidsteam, includes all heads of departments in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Director General of NORAD.

Through the third part of our AIDS project - the Aids Forum, I have attempted to build a powerful new alliance across organizational boundaries, with a range of business, labor, civic, religious, social and cultural organizations involved. The fact that the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry, represented by Karl Glad, and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, represented by its former leader, Yngve Hågensen, are both taking part in the Forum, is of particular importance. They represent a wealth of experience on today’s topic of discussion – the world of work.

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I greatly appreciate the initiative taken by Aidsnet’s working group on Prevention and Protection in the Workplace to arrange this conference. I was pleased to be asked to give the opening address.

It is gratifying to see Uganda, Thailand and the ILO represented here today. Both Thailand and Uganda are countries which were notable in being quick to take HIV/AIDS seriously. On a trip to Uganda and Kenya with the Aids Forum in August, I met President Museveni. He told me that AIDS was discussed openly in Uganda at the early stages of the epidemic, enabling his government to get countermeasures off to an early start. He used the expression "You must raise the alarm when a lion is in the village". Thanks to prompt action, Uganda has managed to turn the tide – although the challenges are still enormous.

Thailand, too, is making progress in its fight against this deadly epidemic. When UN organizations discuss HIV/AIDS prevention in Southeast Asia, they point to Thailand’s policy as an example of "best practices". Hopefully, other countries in the region – where infection rates are growing fast – will learn from the policies and practices developed in Thailand.

The ILO has recently issued a Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work, aimed at preventing the spread and mitigating the impact of AIDS. I am certain that everyone here today has much to learn from what our speakers from Uganda, Thailand and the ILO have to say.

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Let me give a short outline of what I consider the most central problems pertaining to HIV/AIDS and the workplace (apart from the obvious – which is human suffering).

Increasing business expenses is probably the most obvious reason for employers to take interest and get involved in the struggle against HIV/AIDS. AIDS differs from other diseases in one fundamental way. Most diseases affect the weakest – children, the elderly, the sick, the poor – the hardest. The greatest impact of AIDS, however, has been on the working population, especially young adults – normally the most productive segment of society.

As many of you may know, I have a background from academia and from the corporate sector, before being called to serve in the Government. Also from those vantagepoints, I saw the need for a broader coalition to protect investments in human resources. All companies today – particularly those operating in high-infection areas, but not only those – have a shared interest with trade unions to ensure the health of its workforce. There is more and more evidence that, for any society, investment in health is key to economic and social development. And for business, a healthy workforce is essential for profit and growth.

HIV/AIDS burdens employers with added costs: health-related expenses, sick leave and the absence of employees attending funerals are all on the rise. The recruiting and training of new employees to replace those who succumb to AIDS is demanding a growing share of the available resources, and it can be difficult to replace skilled workers and key personnel.

In short, the HIV/AIDS epidemic obviously adds to business expenses and, thus, undermines economic growth.

Because the cost of HIV-positive workers is high, many employers have recognized that it is to their own advantage to take preventive action. In Brazil, the Volkswagen carmakers – which have 30,000 people on their payroll – implemented a major AIDS program as early as 1996. Three years later the results were noticeable. Hospitalization payments had subsided. HIV/AIDS-related costs were 40 per cent down.

The second key issue in this debate is the issue of workers’ rights. Dismissing an employee infected with HIV/AIDS, while he or she is still fit for work, is a violation of a basic human right. How do we prevent discrimination in the workplace? Stigmatization – how do we deal with it?

The human rights problematique pertains not only to those infected. A shortage of employable adults in the labor pool will generally mean that new workers enter the pool at progressively younger ages. In this situation caution is called for. We must maintain clear standards regarding child labor and children’s rights.

It is often difficult for conventional AIDS projects to reach men. But because men are in the majority at most workplaces, the workplace is an extremely important arena for reaching the male population. Obviously, preventive AIDS projects at the workplace are very important for curbing the rate of infection in society at large.

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Let me take a minute or two to highlight two examples of AIDS prevention in the Norwegian business community.

Veidekke, a Norwegian construction firm, has a representative here today who will speak on the challenges confronting Norwegian companies with regard to HIV/AIDS. Veidekke has developed a cohesive approach to preventive action against HIV/AIDS in the workplace. By integrating instruction on how to prevent HIV/AIDS into its employee training programs, Veidekke protects its own interests, but the benefits also extend to society at large. Veidekke has set an example worth following.

Another institution that deserves our attention is the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries – NORFUND – which is a key institution in our development policies. NORFUND has initiated an internal process to raise the awareness with respect to HIV/AIDS challenges within the organization. The output of the process will be a folder on HIV/AIDS. The folder will seek to provide NORFUND's partners with information and advice on the sort of issues they must be prepared to encounter in connection with this epidemic. (By the way, NORFUND has not been instructed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do this; they may have been inspired by us, but the credit is entirely theirs).

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Before ending, I would like to stress an important point:

Our move to give priority to the struggle against HIV/AIDS is not a matter of keeping up with the latest international development trend.

It is a strategic effort to maintain the foundation for development in those parts of the world that are most in need – that foundation being human resources, more than anything else.

The suffering that follows in the wake of this epidemic is beyond belief. On my trip to Africa with the Aids Forum, we met people in the slums of Kampala and Nairobi who displayed strength seldom seen in our part of the world. People who showed that, backed by solidarity from the international community, they could build a decent life in spite of the misfortune that had befallen them. This trip made a deep impression on me and the members of the Aids Forum, giving, as it did, tangible expression of the importance of getting involved and shouldering our part of the burden; our part of the moral responsibility to act.

To help foster growth and development, we must combat – and ultimately conquer – AIDS.

Part of the huge challenge ahead of us must be met in the workplace.

Indeed, part of the job probably cannot be done in any other arena than in the world of work. Therefore, this conference is a very timely one.

I wish you all the best – here today, and in your future work.

Thank you.