Companies Wake Up to AIDS Threat.

(From The Moscow Times)

By the time the mining conglomerate Anglo American decided to provide AIDS drugs to its work force in southern Africa in 2002, the company estimated that up to 50,000 would need treatment at a cost $4.5 million in the first year alone.

Business leaders and HIV/AIDS experts hope it doesn't come to that in Russia -- a ticking time bomb with one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in the world. Some 1 percent to 2 percent of the population is already infected.

John Tedstrom, president of Transatlantic Partners Against AIDS, an NGO fighting the virus in the former Soviet Union, said companies operating in Russia will inevitably be drawn in -- either by choice or by necessity.

"The only question," he said, "is whether the companies will be responsive to an epidemic that will have already attacked their work forces and their communities, or whether they will be proactive and educate employees and their families on ways to stay healthy."

The good news is that a handful of multinational giants have already launched programs to fight the spread of HIV. Gazprom-Media, the media arm of gas giant Gazprom, is cobbling together what is expected to be the largest awareness campaign ever conducted by a Russian company, and has already enlisted support from Prof-Media, Russia Online, Viacom and others.

Participants have yet to put a figure on how much they are willing to spend on the project, but Gazprom-Media says it will provide airtime and ad space in its media organizations -- which include NTV, TNT, Ekho Moskvy and Sport-FM -- as well as journalist-training classes and AIDS- awareness leadership programs.