A Way to Foster Employee Health
JWANENG, Botswana -- The digging does not stop. Not when night falls or when a three-year drought sears the countryside or when the nation edges toward famine. Workers for Debswana Diamond Co. have not stopped digging for 20 years, scooping out enough wealth to make Jwaneng the world's richest diamond mine and Botswana's economy one of the fastest-growing in southern Africa.
Gems, and the miners who dig them up, are building the nation. So when the death rate among Debswana's 6,000 employees doubled in five years and nearly a third of the workforce -- including 18% of its executives -- became infected with human immunodeficiency virus, the company took an unprecedented step. In 1999, it began offering voluntary testing for HIV, which can lead to AIDS, at mining operations around Botswana.
"We decided that AIDS was the biggest threat to our business," said Assistant General Manager Sebetlela Sebetlela. So last year, Debswana became the first company in Africa to give HIV-fighting anti-retroviral therapy to its employees, he said.
"It wasn't just that we wanted to be good," he added. "We realized that unless we did something, we could have had a situation where production came to a halt."
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is beginning to take an economic toll on sub-Saharan Africa, hindering the region's efforts to lift itself out of poverty.
Companies in the region are reporting increased absenteeism and rising recruitment and training costs as AIDS-stricken workers sicken and die. Studies have shown that businesses are spending six to 10 times as much money on HIV-infected employees as on healthy workers. Production losses so far have been modest, but they are noticeable and deepening.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the focal point of the pandemic, according to a United Nations report released last month. In the hardest-hit countries -- Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe -- one of every three residents has HIV. Of the 3.1 million deaths due to AIDS this year, 77% have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.
In a recent speech in Johannesburg, South Africa, Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS for this continent, said the pandemic has devastated the region's agricultural sector and is driving a food shortage that is putting 15 million Africans at risk of starvation.
Botswana's Affluence
