HIV/AIDS awareness at work beneficial: Official

The National National

AWARENESS on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the workplace is important because it significantly impacts people and businesses, an official says.
Lae Business Coalition Against HIV and AIDS coordinator Rodney Mukinere told The National last week that HIV and AIDS directly affects the infected worker but the business houses and organisations that the person was serving.
According to the organisation’s research, the impact a HIV-infected worker had on his employer was:

  • Increased insurance cover;
  • increased medical costs and assistance;
  • a need to use company hours for HIV testing and counselling;
  • a decline in productivity, re-investment and reliability; and,
  • A decline in profits.

Mukinere said HIV and AIDS awareness would help workers know more about the disease and make them aware of the effect it would have their work and their family.
“Workers get drunk and they don’t know what they do when intoxicated,” he said.
“When they travel to other places, they are given allowances, and nobody would know what they did when they are away. Prevention is the best option because once infected, it is for a lifetime.
“The medication – anti-retroviral treatment (ART) – will be for a lifetime. When a staff member is sick, there will be an increase in absenteeism, which affects his or her salaries or wages, there will be a decline in staff performance and working morale, loss of skills due to disabilities caused by AIDS and others.”
Mukinere said the organisation understood that a lot of workers in many businesshouses lacked basic HIV and AIDS information.
Mukinere, who has been HIV positive since 2000, said he shared his life testimony to many workers in all his awareness meetings in Lae, and was happy to have done so.