ABIDJAN (ILO News) - The AIDS epidemic is killing the most productive members of the workforce in Africa, and threatens to lower productivity, decrease overall demand for goods and services and spawn a new wave of child labourers and AIDS orphans, according to a new ILO report on HIV/AIDS in Africa issued here today.
The report Action against HIV/AIDS in Africa: An initiative in the context of the world of work * said "AIDS is affecting, and ultimately killing, the most productive labour force" of African employment, and could well become "the single most important impediment to social and economic progress" on the continent.
"The report said the AIDS epidemic in Africa would result in increased absenteeism, a rise in the number of households headed by women, increased labour costs for employers, curtailed remittances from migrant workers and the bankrupting of social security services. In addition, the report said AIDS would force more children into the active labour force, increase the number of AIDS orphans and generally worsen the child labour situation.
"HIV/AIDS makes the cost of doing business more expensive, while at the same time lowering workers' productivity and decreasing overall demand for goods and services (and) decimates management and the skilled labour force," the report said.
Initial data from a new analysis of the workforce in two countries - Zimbabwe and Togo - indicated that the impact of HIV/AIDS would be "very severe indeed" and "would lead to increased morbidity and mortality, reduced population and supply of labour."
In Zimbabwe, where the estimated percentage of the adult population infected with HIV in 1997 was 21%, the report projected that the labour force would be 17.5% smaller in the year 2015 than it would have been, had there been no HIV/AIDS epidemic, increasing by 40% instead of 68%. In Togo, where the 1997 estimate of HIV incidence was lower, at 7%, the ILO study projected that the labour force would be 4% smaller than it would have been without HIV/AIDS during the same period, increasing by 65% instead of an anticipated 70%.
Similar results were found in other countries. In South Africa's mining sector, for example, as many as one out of five workers are infected with HIV. In Rwanda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda, some 80% of persons infected with HIV were between 20 and 49 years old, the ages when they could be expected to be the most productive workers. In Zambia, 96.8% of all deaths in 18 companies surveyed occurred among workers aged 15 to 40, with AIDS-related illness accounting for 56% of the deaths among general workers, 57% among middle level workers, 62% among top level management and 71% among lower level workers.
The report also noted that HIV/AIDS severely threatens both productivity and demand for goods and services in a number of countries. In Mauritius, AIDS resulted in increased health care costs, medical insurance, death benefits and disability and pension payments. In Zimbabwe, life insurance premiums quadrupled in just two years because of AIDS-related deaths. In Tanzania and Zambia, large companies reported that AIDS and health costs surpassed their total annual profits. In Botswana, companies estimated that AIDS-related costs will increase from under 1% of salary costs to 5% in only six years due to the rapid rise in infections.
The report urged that particular attention be given to prevention and assistance and called for a coherent labour management policy to ensure that all aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are addressed in a "mutually supportive manner". To this end, the report said, employers and workers must take joint action in "multi-sectoral national policies to combat HIV/AIDS." In addition, the report called for the launching of private sector initiatives on an urgent basis.
The report also called on ILO member States to develop programmes that encompasses:
-- statistics to document the problem and make it more visible and amenable to action;
- a multi-media information and education campaign and direct assistance to industry and communities to stimulate and support action at all levels;
- the promotion of a culture of fairness and ethics that can embrace the weak, vulnerable and diseased; and
- a legal and social security system that can provide legal and real protection to victims and society at large.