Brad Mears, the chief executive of SABCOHA, said: "This is an opportunity for us to work with these organisations to provide treatment to those have not been able to fully access it before."

SABCOHA has received funding from the US's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to implement comprehensive workplace programmes within the private sector. Through the vendor chain programme, SABCOHA seeks to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on sustained profitability and economic growth by ensuring that business is a key part of an integrated effective national response to HIV/AIDs.

The objectives of the programme are to:

• Promote a programme to develop the capacity to fight HIV/AIDS in the Sapref supply chain and within the DAC;
• Minimise the risk to which suppliers and thus indirectly Sapref, are exposed in respect of managing HIV/AIDS;
• Maintain the organisation's supply chain;
• Demonstrate leadership in the southern African region in managing HIV/AIDS; and
• Develop international quality practice in respect of how the private sector responds to HIV/AIDS.

SABCOHA will manage all the technical components of the programme, contract with sub-contractors who will implement it, and manage these contractors. As part of the CDC agreement, the coalition will directly fund the delivery of the components of the programme. The DAC will be responsible for playing a contractor/supplier liaison role.

The aim in the DAC is to roll out the programme to an initial 10 member companies, over an initial six to eight months, with treatment and care being continued in these companies for five years. On the basis of this learning, the programme will be expanded to the entire cluster.

Sapref's aim is to roll out the programme to a pilot group of companies, over an initial six to eight months with treatment and care being continued in these companies for the period of the CDC award, until September 2011.

Implementation process

Step One - use of the SABCOHA toolkit
SABCOHA has developed a researched toolkit aimed at SMMEs (with 50 to 250 employees). It is a guide to help SMMEs to implement a workplace programme.

The aims are to provide businesses with a management pathway in establishing a focused HIV and AIDS campaign to educate employees about the dangers and risks of HIV and AIDS; reduce the transmission rate; live and work "positively" and healthily; and mitigate the socioeconomic impact of HIV and AIDS within the business' immediate environment.

The toolkit has several components that are supported through a structured training programme, including individual company consultations:

1. Management Pathway - provides a six-step guide to setting up an HIV/AIDS programme for a company, including a monitoring and evaluation tool.
2. Steering Committee Guide - to be used by management and the steering committee to set up all elements of the HIV and AIDS programme. The working documents include conducting prevention programmes; providing awareness information; and knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAP) surveys.
3. Champion's Reference - This component supports the programme co-ordinator. The manual includes training lessons to provide champions with simple training material. The toolkit also has frequently asked questions index cards as well as a video on Living Openly with HIV/AIDS.

Step Two - conduct an initial assessment of the risk level of each company by: 

• Carrying out an environmental scan of the services available to suppliers.
• Through the use of reputable service providers develop workplace interventions and provide capacity for management, policy development, steering committee, champion training, peer education and HIV prevention training.
• Offering training to individual company management, steering committees and HIV champions using a cluster approach.

Step Three - offer VCT and treatment

• The Capacitation Cycle for each company will be divided into two - in the first six months the company is prepared through training and the toolkit; in the second six months VCT and treatment and care activities are undertaken.
• Voluntary counselling and testing, or VCT, will be offered to all employees on the Sapref site of the contractor/supplier companies participating, most likely through a VCT drive onsite. Depending on the final treatment and care programme adopted, employees of these contracting companies may also be able to access VCT offsite through various service providers.
• Should an employee test positive they will be given the option to register with the programme for managed care. Those who are positive but do not need to go on to ARVs immediately will be managed on an ongoing basis through the support of lifestyle counselling, medical check-ups and CD4 count testing.  Those who require treatment immediately will be assessed for treatment readiness, given adherence counselling, and put on a treatment programme consisting of medical monitoring and drug provision.

About SABCOHA

SABCOHA aims to co-ordinate a private sector response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is a member-driven organisation and, since the beginning of 2007, its membership base has had significant growth, with several big corporates, medium-sized enterprises and smaller companies, including service providers, joining forces in the private sector initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. For more information, click here.

About Sapref

A joint venture between Shell SA Energy and BP Southern Africa, Sapref is southern Africa's largest crude oil refinery, with a refining capacity of 8,5 million tonnes a year. The refinery has been in operation for 44 years. Building work on the Sapref refinery started in 1960 and the first staff members were employed in June 1963. For more information, click here.

About DAC

The Durban Automotive Cluster is a proactive and ambitious public-private partnership that is focused on developing the competitiveness of the automotive industry in KwaZulu-Natal. The DAC section 21 company operates according to a fixed business plan that aligns all activities with a set of goals common to all parties in the public private partnership, namely companies in the local automotive manufacturing sector and the eThekwini municipality. For more information, click here.

About CDC

SABCOHA received funding of $8,5-million in 2007 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States to strengthen SMME workplace HIV responses. The funding - $1,7-million a year for the next five years - will give a massive boost to SABCOHA's SMME-related programmes. The rollout of the CDC programme has required significant organisational focus but is proving to be a highly worthwhile experience. For more information, click here.

This publication (journal, article, etc.) was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number 1U2GPS000794-01 from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STDs and TB Prevention.