HIV/AIDS and Business:
A Call to Action in Africa and Asia

A hospital ward in Kinshasa, Congo. Twelve million African children have been orphaned by AIDS. Photo by Malcolm Linton

Forty-two million people around the globe live with HIV/AIDS; an additional 80 million may be infected by 2010, with new cases concentrated in Russia, India, China, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. The scope of the epidemic is so staggering that any plan of action seems inadequate in comparison. Yet the social and financial cost of inaction is so high that standing by is not an option, particularly for multinational corporations doing business in countries with high infection rates.

“AIDS places a dramatic spotlight on the question of corporate responsibility,” says HBS senior lecturer Diana Barrett. “It’s making corporations question the boundaries of who and what they are accountable for in their communities.” Barrett presented guidelines for cross-sector partnerships to fight the epidemic at “HIV/AIDS and Business in Africa and Asia,” one of four workshops held on the topic this year at Harvard University. Cosponsored by UNAIDS and the World Economic Forum, the workshops were organized in conjunction with Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG), School of Public Health, and AIDS Institute. After opening at the Kennedy School in February and moving to Durban, South Africa, in June, HBS hosted over sixty representatives from business, government, and NGOs in September. A final workshop was held in Beijing in November.

Barrett cochaired the series with John Ruggie, director of the KSG’s Center for Business and Government, but she credits Daniella Ballou-Aares (MBA ’02), a consultant at Bain & Company in New York, with proposing that they be organized at all. Ballou-Aares worked for Bain in South Africa before receiving a joint degree from HBS and the Kennedy School. “Bain said that I could contribute up to 50 percent of my time to work on this issue — that was a significant factor in my decision to return after graduation,” she says. As a student, Ballou-Aares worked in Liberia with the International Rescue Committee (Bulletin, December 2000) and conducted a field research project on delivering treatment to AIDS patients in Malawi. “The AIDS issue incorporates human rights, development, and health issues — it’s the ultimate strategic challenge.”

At the Kennedy School workshop, participants discussed a case coauthored by Barrett and Ballou-Aares on Heineken’s efforts to implement an HIV/AIDS program for their workers in Africa. It cites quantifiable costs of the epidemic to business, including lower productivity, increased expenditures, and declining profits and investment. “When 30 to 40 percent of your workforce is affected by HIV/AIDS, it forces corporations to confront the issue,” Barrett remarks.

“If you’re not treating and educating your employees, you risk more than workers dying,” agrees Ballou-Aares. “You risk losing your customers, your markets — the complete disintegration of communities where you operate.”

Experts concur that China is the next potential hot spot for the disease, a troubling prospect in the wake of SARS. “Given its governance and structure, China has not developed strong internal scanning mechanisms for confronting its public health problems,” notes Barrett. “I do feel optimistic, however, because these workshops have created a body of community wisdom that the Chinese can use to leapfrog over some of the problems other countries have faced.”

“We put a lot of effort into making these workshops more than an academic exercise,” says Ballou-Aares. “Our focus was on how organizations can build partnerships across sectors, learn from one another, and advance the collective knowledge base.” Another objective of the workshops is to develop training programs in the prevention of HIV/AIDS that can be scaled to the needs of the organization and deliver key curricular materials and models over the Internet.

The challenge is to overcome the perception that the problem is too big for individuals to do anything about it. “I tell students that between the time they brush their teeth and walk into my ten o’clock class, 267 people have died of AIDS,” Barrett comments. “It’s something that touches us on a daily basis, but we’re in-oculated to it.”

Players in the fight against HIV/AIDS can come in all sizes, she continues — even a small bicycle shop in China could rent or loan bicycles to deliver medication. “My sense is that people are innately sympathetic. If you provide specific tools, it makes it easier for them to act in a responsible way.” One of the primary objectives of the Harvard workshops is to engage in the sort of cross-sector collaboration that will make those tools available — and relevant — to all.

For further information on the workshops, visit www.ksg.harvard.edu/cbg/hiv-aids/.