HIV 'afflicting 24m workers'
By, Gulf Daily News - The Voice of Bahrain, December 2, 2006
GENEVA: The workplace may be the best setting for millions of people with HIV and Aids to be administered drugs that could extend their lives, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said yesterday. The ILO report, marking World Aids Day, came as US President George Bush joined world leaders in renewing a vow to combat the disease. The ILO report said more than 24 million people in the global workforce in 2005 suffered from HIV or Aids. More than 67 per cent of them lived in Africa.
Giving these workers access to anti-retroviral drug therapy, or ARVs, could have lengthened their working lives by more than two years, and considerably increased per capita incomes in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the report found.
"Access to ARVs in the workplace must rise substantially," it said, estimating that 1.8m more African workers would be alive in 2010 if 80pc of the workforce were to start and stay on ARV therapy from this year.
Public health experts say that the life-extending drugs have transformed the once-deadly HIV and Aids into chronic conditions. But they need to be taken at regular intervals to be effective, and can cause drug resistance when taken improperly.
ILO estimated the HIV epidemic stripped an average of 0.5pc off the economic growth of 43 affected countries every year between 1992 and 2004.
Employment growth also suffered markedly. ILO said HIV and Aids caused a 0.5pc yearly decline in sub-Saharan Africa's annual employment growth rate.
The theme of this year's World Aids Day is accountability.
Accountability requires every president, prime minister, parliamentarian and politician, to decide and declare that 'Aids stops with me.' And it requires every one of us to help bring Aids out of the shadows and spread the message that silence is death," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Bush meanwhile, put a big emphasis on promoting abstinence.
Abstinence is derided by many activists as moralising. These campaigners plead instead for sex education and access to condoms.
South Africa said it would launch awareness programmes in the hope of persuading teenagers aged 14-17 to "delay the initiation of sex."
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair hit out at religious bans on condoms, saying "if all the churches and religious organisations were facing up to reality, it would be better."
Source: http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=163374&Sn=WORL&IssueID=29257
GENEVA: The workplace may be the best setting for millions of people with HIV and Aids to be administered drugs that could extend their lives, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said yesterday. The ILO report, marking World Aids Day, came as US President George Bush joined world leaders in renewing a vow to combat the disease. The ILO report said more than 24 million people in the global workforce in 2005 suffered from HIV or Aids. More than 67 per cent of them lived in Africa.
Giving these workers access to anti-retroviral drug therapy, or ARVs, could have lengthened their working lives by more than two years, and considerably increased per capita incomes in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the report found.
"Access to ARVs in the workplace must rise substantially," it said, estimating that 1.8m more African workers would be alive in 2010 if 80pc of the workforce were to start and stay on ARV therapy from this year.
Public health experts say that the life-extending drugs have transformed the once-deadly HIV and Aids into chronic conditions. But they need to be taken at regular intervals to be effective, and can cause drug resistance when taken improperly.
ILO estimated the HIV epidemic stripped an average of 0.5pc off the economic growth of 43 affected countries every year between 1992 and 2004.
Employment growth also suffered markedly. ILO said HIV and Aids caused a 0.5pc yearly decline in sub-Saharan Africa's annual employment growth rate.
The theme of this year's World Aids Day is accountability.
Accountability requires every president, prime minister, parliamentarian and politician, to decide and declare that 'Aids stops with me.' And it requires every one of us to help bring Aids out of the shadows and spread the message that silence is death," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Bush meanwhile, put a big emphasis on promoting abstinence.
Abstinence is derided by many activists as moralising. These campaigners plead instead for sex education and access to condoms.
South Africa said it would launch awareness programmes in the hope of persuading teenagers aged 14-17 to "delay the initiation of sex."
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair hit out at religious bans on condoms, saying "if all the churches and religious organisations were facing up to reality, it would be better."
Source: http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=163374&Sn=WORL&IssueID=29257
posted by AIDS-Care-Watch at 3:51 pm
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