John Baeyens

Euan Wilderman and George Seithishu on the Aids problems in South Africa. As a mayor of Plettenberg Bay, Euan is convinced the numeros churches should play a much bigger role in sensibilisating the people. Many people go nearly every day to church, it is the social gathering place.

Meanhwile many solid statistics are still lacking, even though the overall projections are truly scaring (graph below: source: WHO). For all the research and statistics available on HIV/AIDS, it is hard to find data pertaining specifically to skilled workers. T-Systems, which employees only skilled workers, found that 7.2% of all employees tested were infected with HIV. Forbes magazine recently reported that Heineken, which guarantees antiretroviral drug coverage to both its 6.000 Africa staff and their immediate dependents, believes that without this programme 20% of its senior management in Africa would have died within seven years of AIDS-related illnesses. Vodacom has identified numerous indirect costs of the epidemic to its business, including the negative impact on staff morale, costs of ensuring that occupational health and safety standards are adequate, dealing with staff prejudice, as well as loss of productivity and absenteeism. The costs to the company of recruiting and training staff, given the higher rate of death and disabilities of currently skilled staff, is expected to be R11.000 per new employee.

“AIDS selectively destroys human capital, that is, peoples’ accumulated life experiences, their human and job skills, and their knowledge and insights built up over a period of years,” warns a new report by the World Bank, titled ‘The Long-run Economic Costs of AIDS: Theory and an Application to South Africa.’

Aids is the number one risk for the social & econmic stability in South Africa and yet too few people realise what’s at stake. Which is why it why I would be absolutely delighted to see the Horizon 2007 program moving forward, supporting Plettenberg Bay with R 2.500.000 per year in combatting Aids.

Meanhwile, WillPower gave comittment for building the backpackers place in Kolweni. Lorena put me in contact with Artchitecture for Humanity. Especially this modular design could be interesting in perspective to Kolweni.

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