What are the pros and cons of Anglo American’s adoption of an aggressive strategy in combating HIV/AIDS among its South African workforce? What recommendations would you give the company concerning its HIV/AIDS policy? The pros behind Anglo American’s ART program are the fact that they took the initiative to step up and help their workers prevent the transmission of AIDS, treat AIDS, and provide other services like giving free condoms, providing counseling, etc.
By taking the initiative and changing the way they see the AIDS epidemic in Africa, Anglo American became a trend setter, changing the way other companies operating in Africa treat their employees with AIDS. Their ART program has received good response from the World Health Organization, Global Business Council for HIV/AIDS, and other world organizations, thus putting American Anglo in the spotlight for being a socially responsible company. It has opened many doors for partnerships and deal agreements for Anglo American, but the parade could not last forever. Unfortunately, the ART program isn’t flawless and thus has some issues to be addressed.
The first issue is that the cost the program is extremely expensive due mostly to the highly priced, yet necessary, medicine to combat aids. In addition to the program draining Anglo American’s monetary resources, the South African government, oddly, did not approve of the ART program for various reasons and, therefore, can jeopardize Anglo American’s relationship with the government of South Africa.
With ART draining resources and potentially jeopardizing the relationship Anglo American has established with the South African government, the only recommendation I can give Anglo American is to drop its current ART program and find a more effective and efficient way to fight AIDS in Africa, while still maintain a positive relationship with the government of South Africa.
Because such a large percentage of its workforce consists of migrant workers who are more likely to acquire and spread HIV/AIDS, should Anglo American adopt the policy of not hiring migrant workers? Should the South African government close the doors to migrant workers? Due to the fact that a majority, about a fourth, of its workers are migrant workers, adopting a policy that prohibited the employment of migrant workers and the termination of current migrant workers would severely damage the company and essentially put its production at a standstill.
In addition, if South Africa implemented a policy that closed its doors to migrants to prevent the spread of AIDS, it would destroy South Africa’s economy by loosing its attractiveness as a country with a plethora of labor, thus driving businesses away. On the other hand, it could attract people looking for labor opportunities or living space that have a lower chance of contracting HIV/AIDS compared to the rest of Africa.
Ghana is a prime example of a country closing its borders to protect its citizens from Ebola, causing it to be a place for many Africans to want to live and work in, due to the fact that it is “safer” than the countries that still have open borders. What role do pharmaceutical companies play in responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa? What policies or courses of action would you recommend to a company that produces HIV/AIDS drugs?
Pharmaceutical companies play an important role in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa since they are the suppliers of life saving medicine that is distributed to those infected. Some current roles they have are selling their medicine at subsidized rates for easy access to the people in Africa, collaborating with the government of South Africa to create strategies and implement ways to better distribute their medicines to stop HIV/AIDS, etc.
So for the most part, pharmaceutical companies are mainly there to “clean up” the effects of HIV/AIDS by providing treatment medicine to those infected, so I would recommend that the companies became more proactive opposed to reactive.
In this, I imply that pharmaceutical companies invest in research and development projects that can find a cure rather than a treatment. Another suggestion I could recommend pharmaceutical companies is to become more socially responsible and possibly team up with charity organizations like RED to provide AIDS/HIV medication for free to those in need while also demanding implementations of new policies that will reduce the spread of AIDS/HIV from the government of South Africa.
Elsewhere in the chapter, we described the more aggressive policies of the Brazilian and Thai governments in the battle against HIV/AIDS. Should the South African government adopt a similarly aggressive approach? Why or why not? Although the simple logic would be “Yes, Africa should take aggressive actions to fightAID S,” there are many reasons why they shouldn’t. For starters Africa already provides low priced, top quality HIV/AIDS medicine to its citizens through subsidiaries rather than creating its own unlicensed generics like Brazil and Thailand.
This can be seen as a “positive” move on Africa’s part since they didn’t create a product using back door methods that messed with the market price of licensed AIDS/HIV medicine, thus giving them a better chance for pharmaceutical companies to offer better prices on other drugs or even invest in R&D for Africa primarily. In addition, if the situation in Africa worsens, and they do have a aggressive policy, aid from other countries won’t come so easily since they already have an aggressive policy implemented and, essentially, can take care of themselves.
So not only did Africa manage to keep the epidemic under some control, they also left themselves in a position that they can easily acquire foreign aid, assistance from pharmaceutical companies, and have maintained good relations with governments/ pharmaceutical companies by not using backdoor methods to acquire medication and mess with market prices of similar drugs.