Companies around the world are falling behind in the fight against AIDS, leaving a "black hole" in education and healthcare, experts said on Thursday. More than 70 percent of companies have no HIV/AIDS strategy of any kind, and only 7 percent have a formal written policy, according to a survey by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Harvard School of Public Health.
"Too few companies are responding proactively to the social and business threats of HIV/AIDS," said Kate Taylor, director of the WEF's Global Health Initiative.
With 40 million people infected by HIV world-wide and new infections spreading at the rate of 14,000 a day, the epidemic has the potential to cripple economies and decimate workforces, hitting the bottom line of many businesses.
Yet the survey of nearly 9,000 corporate leaders in 104 countries found only 14 percent of firms had conducted quantitative HIV/AIDS risk assessments and two-thirds had no idea how prevalent the disease was among their employees.
"We find the report extremely worrying," Kathleen Cravero, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, told Reuters.
"Business leaders don't know and they are not trying to find out ... It is a huge black hole that is missing at a time when we need it most."
One in six executives expect AIDS to have a serious impact on their business now or in the future.
But the overall level of concern about the disease has actually dropped by 23 percent in the last 12 months - perhaps due to "HIV fatigue" or a belief that new institutions, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, will come to the rescue.
Cravero said the decline was alarming because the workplace remained an essential front in tackling HIV/AIDS, since mobile male workers - including contract miners and truckers - were the main conduit for spreading the virus in many societies.
"The workplace is a really effective place to get messages across to men and to offer them services," she said. "Any company that has really taken this seriously and reached out, like Anglo-American and Heineken, has not only made a difference for their employees but for an entire community."
It is only in the hardest-hit countries, where HIV prevalence rates are above 20 percent of the population, that businesses have become seriously engaged in offering advice and treatment.
Yet across sub-Saharan Africa, even in countries with HIV rates of 10-19 percent, formal AIDS policies remain rare.