HIV/AIDS is affecting every sector of South African society, making it critical for business, the government and civil society to share knowledge, skills and experience to strengthen the response to the pandemic, writes Les Tilley.

Various organisations in these sectors, including Gauteng's Multi-Sectoral Aids Unit (MSAU), the Gauteng department of health, SABCOHA, Aganang HIV Resource Centre, and Anglo Platinum's HIV/AIDS Workplace Programme, met on 15 September 2008 to share expertise, research, experiences, best practice and emerging trends regarding HIV/AIDS in the workplace in Gauteng.

MSAU presented the benefits of efficient, co-ordinated and collaborative efforts in addressing HIV/AIDS. It also gave an overview of the unfolding epidemics of HIV infection, AIDS deaths and orphaning in Gauteng. The numbers of orphans in the province is growing, and a study will soon be launched to look at the psychosocial development of orphans and vulnerable children in Gauteng.

Speaking after the meeting, Dr Liz Floyd, the MSAU director, said: "A key area of the dialogue focused on the importance of workplace programmes linking up to local services within employees' communities. In this way, employees' families can also benefit from quality services, and when employees are too ill to come and use the services offered at their workplaces, they can be referred to services in their localities.

"It was also noted that the private sector should play a greater role in funding NGOs that are involved in HIV/AIDS work."

Sharing lessons

A highlight of the meeting was sharing lessons learned from programmes by members of SABCOHA and Gauteng government departments.

"The MSAU plans to assist SABCOHA to set up systems to record and measure their work," Dr Floyd said.

Brad Mears, SABCOHA's CEO, was also at the meeting. "We looked at how we need to re-evaluate workplace HIV prevention programmes because they're not working as well as they should.

"We need to take a better look at subcultures, cultural and behavioural systems and provide better communication on HIV prevention in order to improve them."

Mears said he wanted to align with the Gauteng Province Strategic Plan against HIV/AIDS to benchmark workplace programmes. He aimed to build a stronger, more active relationship between SABCOHA, the MSAU and the Gauteng government to enhance their capacities to fight the pandemic.

Like Mears, Arnold Phala, the assistant director in the department of health, also believes prevention programmes need to be improved.

A suggestion from the meeting that should be put into action was using the expertise of sociologists and psychologists to create programmes that would result in increased behaviour change, he said. Better monitoring and evaluation of all HIV programmes was another major issue.

Judith Bester, the general manager of the Aganang HIV Resource Centre, which offers wellness, prevention, and health risk management programmes to small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) nationwide, also spoke about the meeting.

Working together

"I mentioned how the government and the private sector needed to work together more to share resources and the costs of paying for venues and facilitators to run HIV/AIDS programmes. The government has many resources and I challenged it to share more of what it has."

The meeting included Gillian Gresak, Anglo Platinum's group HIV & AIDS manager, who explained how knowledge assessment and training would soon be conducted with traditional health practitioners and Anglo Platinum medical staff so there would be equity of knowledge and alignment of on-site health services with community health services.

"We're also explaining to patients the importance of informing traditional health practitioners if they are on antiretrovirals and our hospital and clinic staff if they're taking traditional medicine," Gresak said.

"This information needs to be conveyed because there have been cases of bad reactions, and even deaths, from people using both ARVs and traditional medicine."

The MSAU also recommended that corporates use the Family Health International Behaviour Surveillance Survey to measure behaviour change because it was more specific and focused than the Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviour Survey now being used.

Quarterly meetings between the MSAU, business, the government and civil society were planned, to drive more regular dialogue that will build consistent, united efforts in fighting HIV.

Set up by the Gauteng department of health in 2001, the MSAU supports the running of HIV/AIDS programmes by provincial government departments, civil society organisations and the private sector.

It co-ordinates the joint Gauteng AIDS programme, which includes the workplace programmes of government departments, funding the training of church leaders to support their members and working with the Department of Correctional Services to provide HIV/AIDS education in prisons. - Thandiwe McCloy for SABCOHA