By Lauren Compere and Zara Cadoux

Introduction
by Daniel Rosan

"It is high time we tapped the strengths of the business sector to the full. AIDS effects business. The spread of the pandemic has caused business costs to expand, and markets to shrink. As both the current balance sheet and future indicators show, the business community needs to get involved to protect its bottom line. We need your help-right now." - Kofi Annan, Former United Nations Secretary-General

"[HIV/AIDS] is an unprecedented crisis, in scale and nature, and we have no choice but to act in exceptional ways. This is also a crisis that will continue for some generations. So our basic choice is only whether we act exceptionally right now or later, when many more millions have died. But let us not fool ourselves. We cannot plead ignorance. If we don't live up to our responsibility as a generation, we have only ourselves to blame."
- Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director United Nations Joint Program on HIV and AIDS

Sustainable economic development is intimately tied to stable public health. Dr. Jeffery Sachs, in his book The End of Poverty, argues that generating economic growth requires "unravel[ing] the interconnectedness between extreme poverty, rampant disease, unstable and harsh climate conditions, high transport costs, chronic hunger, and inadequate food production." Sound public health is a prerequisite to addressing other pressing economic and social challenges. Disease and poverty are locked in a vicious cycle where disease "impoverishes a country, making it too expensive to prevent and treat the disease." To create growth in emerging markets, this cycle must be halted by preventing and treating disease.

No disease proves these points more than HIV and AIDS. Since 1981, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide. In 2006, an estimated 39.5 million people are living with HIV. In the year 2006 alone, an estimated 4.3 million people were newly infected with the virus and 2.9 million died from AIDS. Although Sub-Saharan Africa remains the hardest hit by HIV/AIDS, worst case scenarios warn that by 2010 the number of people infected with HIV in Asia could surpass that of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The adult prevalence rates in Asian countries will remain lower than other regions around the world, but the populations of Asian nations are so large that even a low national prevalence rate can mean a large number of HIV infections. For example, India has more infections than any other country in the world with 5.7 million people infected. However, the overall prevalence rate in India is below 1%, which is the point at which public health officials define a generalized epidemic.

Although the focus of this paper is HIV, employers are challenged by other diseases as well. There are currently over two billion people carrying the TB virus. 3 million people died from TB in 2004. HIV and TB are most common in people 15-59 years old impacting workers in their productive and reproductive prime. An estimated 300-500 million people are infected with malaria each year. Malaria kills 3,000 children under 5 everyday and over 1 million people each year. Together, HIV/AIDS and Malaria kill 4 million people each year. The numbers are staggering and will continue to climb if governments and employers do not implement prevention, counseling and testing, and treatment policies.

Socially responsible investors are increasingly interested in engaging business these challenges. Investment firms like F&C Asset Management and UBS are studying the financial impact of HIV. The Ethical Funds Company has researched the intersection between Canadian energy and mining companies and HIV. In the following sections, we will provide investors with a baseline of expectations for the management of the AIDS-TB-Malaria pandemics. This will equip investors to evaluate corporate social responsibility performance on health issues, dialogue with companies, and enhance their ability to properly value their investments in emerging markets.

ICCR's Work on HIV/AIDS

Since 2000, members and associates of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have engaged companies on pandemic disease challenges. Their goals are to enhance company management of the impact of HIV/AIDS on firm business models, workforces and the communities in which firms operate. ICCR members have engaged over 30 companies in a focused set of industries with heavy HIV/AIDS exposure. These include beverages (for example, Coca-Cola and Pepsi), automotive (Ford and General Motors), oil and gas (BP, Chevron-Texaco and Exxon-Mobil, among others), technology (Dell, Intel and Texas Instruments, among others), and pharmaceuticals (for example, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer).

ICCR members have primarily engaged companies with operations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Generally, our experience has been that companies have developed local HIV/AIDS policies and programs for those operations that have the highest prevalence rates. These local programs provide a learning opportunity for managing HIV effectively. Although local specificity of program is important, ICCR members have found that companies must develop global policies that are consistently implemented throughout their operations. The local programs already operating in Sub-Saharan Africa give companies a jumping off point for framing their international standards of prevention and care.

Today, ICCR members and associates are placing new focus on the emerging markets of Asia, especially India. The focus industry in India is high technology, where companies are investing heavily in business process outsourcing, research & development, and manufacturing. To date, ICCR members have engaged a dozen tech firms, both in direct dialogues and as part of industry-wide conversations. ICCR has also convened with both government and non-governmental organizations concerned about HIV and AIDS in Asia.

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