Washington, DC — Global diamond giant De Beers, which is 45 percent owned by Anglo American Plc, was honored Wednesday night for its workplace programs on HIV/Aids. Jonathan Oppenheimer, De Beers's managing director, spoke to AllAfrica after a congressional briefing Wednesday with members of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids. Excerpts follow:
What we are doing as a company is something we must do for ourselves, whether it is recognized or not. It's non-negotiable, if you live by any set of moral standards.
Getting this award is wonderful. It's icing on the cake. But the cake is the effect of what we're doing on the health of our workers and the health of our communities and the health of our business. What we have been able to do so far on HIV/Aids is exciting and hugely comprehensive.
We've been able to increase voluntary testing for HIV among our employees to a rate north of 70 percent. By the end of the year, we expect to have reached a rate north of 90 percent for all our workers.
But knowing one's status is not enough. The next challenge was getting our people on drugs. The company also offers free anti-retroviral treatment (ART) as part of a holistic disease management programme to employees and a spouse or life partner, and this is extended to retired or retrenched employees.
The first important thing is managing that process well so that it is effective and produces the desired health result. We are having a higher effectiveness rate than is the norm in South Africa. Seventy-four percent of our population who are on ART programs, after 12 months, show no detectable viral load, and that is against the industry norm of 16 percent. So we being effective once we are getting people the drugs.
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Second, our treatment program is for life. Once you are on the program, even when you retire, you carry on. And only if you resign out of our organization, do we support you in making the transition into a government-sponsored program. Otherwise, if they want to, employees and former employees can stay with us till the point of demise. Hopefully, that is after a full life.
Our program also brings in the spouses. We haven't had as much success in bringing the spouses in as bringing in our employees. That is our next target.
After that comes the community. We are really working on being inclusive.
If you start getting to the employees, and you get to the spouse, the next natural extension is into the community. That's our latest endeavor. We are using our corporate social investment vehicle, the De Beers Fund, to extend the learnings and experiences that come out of the employee and spouse program to take it into the community, and we are focusing predominantly on women's organizations. In the Northern Cape, our relationship with the local provincial government belies some of the rhetoric at the national level, and it is unbelievably positive.
