Washington, DC — Concerned that competing priorities will blunt efforts to fight HIV/Aids around the world, the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids (GBC) held a series of high-level events in Washington, D.C. this week, culminating in an awards dinner Wednesday evening.
Earlier in the day, members of the group, joined by actress Angelina Jolie, went to the U.S. Capitol for a meeting co-sponsored by Senators Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden. Billed as an exploration of how the public and private sectors can work together to promote Aids relief, the session paired 11 senators and four House members with chief executives and top management from international corporations active in the business coalition.
A major theme of the discussion was how to maintain and increase the U.S. level of support for Aids programs worldwide in the face of other legislative agendas, including extending tax cuts, responding to the human and infrastructural devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and coping with the mounting costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite widely expressed fears from participants that across-the-board program cuts will severely erode funding for HIV/Aids, the business executives urged a stronger response to the Aids emergency. In return, they received bi-partisan assurances that members of Congress are increasingly aware of the needs and open to further discussions about how to meet them.
Among the corporate leaders attending the two-and-a-half-hour session were Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chair of Anglo American, who also chairs the GBC board; Ray Gilmatrtin of Merck; Time Warner and HBO's Richard Plepler; Chris Kirubi of the Kenyan company Haco Industries and executives of five of the six companies receiving this year's award for excellence in the fight against Aids - Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, Jonathan Oppenheimer of De Beers, John Demsey of Estee Lauder and M-A-C Cosmetics, Jonathan Klein of Getty Images and Peter Dolan of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Volkswagen of South Africa also won an award.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) appealed to the business community to express support for Senate passage of a measure to aid orphans and vulnerable children who are affected by the toll of Aids. The bill has already passed the considerable hurdle of a House of Representatives committee, and Boxer said that Senate action would authorize President George Bush to direct resources towards education and skills training, as well as to other programs to protect Aids orphans.
"Days are dwindling until the end of this session," Boxer said. "Your getting behind this effort would make an enormous difference."
Senator Norman Coleman (R-Minnesota), whose sister died of Aids ten years ago, told the business leaders that among their most important contributions could be eroding the stigma of being HIV positive. He told of visits to African homes where Aids could not be mentioned, despite the obvious ravages of the disease on the family.
The heated global debate on whether to favor abstinence and fidelity over condoms to prevent the spread of HIV got some attention, with participants searching for a middle ground where all could stand. "There is in Africa," said Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah), "an effort to change behavior." He advocated a three-point approach: love carefully, no "grazing' and no shunning of people who have Aids.
"And if you do graze, wear a condom," interjected Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and GBC president and CEO, saying that 95 percent of people don't know their HIV status. "A man can have contracted HIV long ago," he said, "and today be absolutely faithful to his wife, but he will still give her the virus, if he doesn't wear a condom." He urged Bennett to add "Know your status" to his list of approaches to pursue.
"I will take that and add it to the litany," Bennett promised.
"I'm passionate about this," Holbrooke said, citing Randall Tobias, head of the President's Emergency Program for Aids Relief (Pepfar), for setting a good example. "He's probably the most tested person in the world. Everywhere he travels he gets tested, preferably with the Minister of Health!" Holbrook praised participant Douglas Michaels, whose company OraSure's HIV test can detect the virus in saliva in 20 minutes.
"We hope that we demonstrate," Michaels responded, "what a small company can do in this global fight." The test was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year and is being used by several companies, including Anglo American and De Beers.
De Beers, represented at the meeting by managing director Jonathan Oppenheimer, received a Coalition award Wednesday evening for his company's voluntary testing and counseling program. De Beers, which offers testing to every employee, has achieved an overall test rate of over 70 percent, a level it hopes to raise to over 90 percent by the end of the year. In some areas of operations, that target has been met already. The company's policy is to provide treatment with anti-retroviral drugs to all employees, as well as to spouses or life partners, who test positive. Oppenheimer said that commitment is firm, but he acknowledged the challenge of administering and funding a sustainable program.
Virgin's Richard Branson and Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) commiserated about the lack of sufficient urgency among both business and political leaders. "We all do little bits, little bits here and there," Branson said. "But there are rows and rows and rows and rows" of victims in Africa, "and we have not even scratched the surface."
"In 2002 legislation, we tried to create a 'war room' to coordinate all approaches to this issue," said Kerry, "but it didn't happen. And we have been caught in a political fight over tax cuts that is robbing us of the chance to make choices we need to be making. I spent the next two years venting a good deal of frustration about this as I traveled around the country."
"And then got more frustrated," someone quipped.
"Yes," Kerry acknowledged ruefully to general laughter, "considerably more frustrated." But also, he added, "more motivated."
The kind of commitment and coordination a war requires is needed, said GBC Executive Director Trevor Nilson. "Eight thousand people are dying today, die every day, from Aids. Twelve thousand more are being infected today. We have to treat that as an emergency."
Participants agreed that no company or government can address the problem effectively without broad cooperation. And, added Chris Kirubi of Kenya's Haco, there must be an acknowledgment that poverty is a component in the spread of HIV - a comment that prompted debate about whether support can be mobilized for a problem as big as poverty.
"I don't have the answer," Angelina Jolie told the group, "but it's very hard for me to accept that we can't do it. Without taking a position on the war in Iraq, I find it very troubling that war spending in three months equals all that we're spending to take on Aids" - a reference to President Bush's announced $15 billion program for HIV/Aids worldwide. Later in an interview on CNN, Jolie pointed out that the sum actually appropriated by Congress for international HIV/Aids projects this year - some $2.5 billion - represents only two weeks of war expenditures.
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Senator Biden proposed that the GBC produce a "business plan" of practical solutions. "Colleagues ask me," he said, "'what's the most important things we can do?' So tell us what those things are and outline the steps that must be in place to allow them to be taken. Give people a sense that something can be done. Otherwise, people say, 'This is so overwhelming, there's nothing I can do about it.' So tell us how we can sell this."
Among those things, both corporate and government participants agreed, is a vaccine. Participants pledged to work both to improve the science and the funding to reach that goal.
Later that night, the GBC honored the winners of the 2005 GBC Awards for Business Excellence at a dinner featuring U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Senator Hilary Clinton (D-New York) U.S. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt and Jolie. Winners include: Workplace Award: Volkswagen of South Africa; Innovation Award: Getty Images; Core Competency Award: M·A·C Cosmetics; Community Award: Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Leadership Award: Virgin Unite; and Testing and Counseling Award: De Beers.
South Africa-based companies lead the way in the response to HIV/Aids according to a World Economic Forum study of 1,552 companies. Ninety-one percent of South African firms have an HIV/Aids policy in place, but the study shows there is a lot of room for improvement across the continent.
On average, African companies are not responding quickly enough to the epidemic, as only 38 percent have either a written or informal HIV/Aids policy in place and up to 93 percent already feel the impact of HIV/Aids on their revenues, according to the study.
