In the midst of a worldwide economic meltdown, organisations in South Africa are directly affected. Some of the questions raised at the breakfast on 10 March included: How is this affecting our HIV and wellness programmes in the workplace? What are companies doing to mitigate the impact of the crisis and how do we ensure the gains achieved in improving workplace health are not lost.

Brad Mears, the chief executive of SABCOHA, said the breakfast was different to other SABCOHA events as it "was defensive and aimed at protecting what we have already achieved". Five corporates were not renewing their membership of SABCOHA as a "knee jerk reaction" to the economic downturn.

Mears warned that this could lead to a reduction in the number of breakfasts and programmes that SABCOHA ran. He posed the question to an increasingly somber audience: "How are we going to defend the gains we have made?"

The first speaker, De Beers' HIV/AIDS manager, Joy Beckett, pointed out that mining companies were cutting back and introducing shorter weeks, longer holidays and "voluntary separation" as their main customers in the United States cut back on their spending.

"The group has mature HIV/AIDS programmes but some are going to have to be put into abeyance."

She said this applied to their prevention programmes but De Beers would "continue to maintain their treatment programmes. Our 2009/10 expenditure on education and awareness will take a dip, if not be put into abeyance."

Dawie Spohr, the senior manager of Toyota South Africa, strongly argued that HIV/AIDS managers needed to make a "business case to their organisations" about how much it cost the company to lose an employee who had worked there for 10 to 15 years and to "not be emotional" about it.

"If you don't make a business case you will be cut. If you don't identify stakeholders and get them on board, you are doomed."

He added that companies would question whether membership of organisations such as SABCOHA was valid in a time of cutbacks and layoffs.

The final speaker was Linzi Smith, the managing director of Education, Training and Counselling, which provides HIV/AIDS, employee wellness and life skills training, consulting and auditing services. She was the technical expert on the SABS Standards Generating Body StanSA TC201 that developed the SANS 26002:2007 HIV Workplace Standard.

Smith said that although the SANS standard offered a management review and an analysis of a company's return on investment on its HIV/AIDS programmes, companies were saying that they "cannot afford to do SANS [South African National Standards] anymore".

They were also saying that despite the "increase in treatment programmes, they are seeing no decrease in the number of new infections. We seem to be digging ourselves deeper into a hole."

The biggest challenge was how to present the business case to management to maintain an effective and healthy workforce, she said.

During the question and answer session, members made a number of suggestions about public-private partnerships and other ways of raising funding. These are to be compiled by SABCOHA and sent to members.

Mears concluded by saying: "We all agreed a number of years ago that the way forward was to implement prevention and treatment programmes but prevention is now being marginalised. The only sustainable way of tackling the disease is through prevention."

Click here to view the outcomes: economic_breakfast_outcomes_mar09_2

For pictures from the breakfast, click here .