VOA标准英语2012--Battling AIDS with Business

 

 

Battling AIDS with Business

Africa’s private sector¹ is being asked to play a bigger role in fighting HIV/AIDS. The Gift from Africa initiative calls on businesses to invest in the continent by investing in health. The initiative was discussed at the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington.

The initiative is a partnership² between the private sector and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis³ and Malaria⁴. Sixty percent of the fund’s allocations go to Africa. And it’s set a goal to save 10 million lives and prevent up to 180 million new infections over the next four years. However, to do that officials say they need help from private companies across Africa.

Dr. Brian Brink⁵ of South Africa is the longest serving member of the Global Fund’s board, but he’s also a businessman. Brink is senior vice-president and chief medical officer of the Anglo-American, one of the world’s largest mining companies. Ninety percent of its operations are in developing countries, many in Africa.

“When we mine in developing countries, we meet the people.and we see the burden of disease in communities. Very often mines are not where the big cities are. The mines are often in the more rural areas - places where health services are perhaps weakest, where the burden of disease has the biggest impact on communities. And guess what? That burden of disease affects our businesses,” he said.

It affected⁶ Anglo-Americans productivity and efficiency.

“It’s no good as a business to just stand back and look at government and say, look, fix this health problem. Sort it up, because we want to get on with business. It doesn’t work like that. We learned that with the AIDS epidemic⁷ around the turn of the millennium,” he said.

Anglo American offered free AIDS treatment for all of its employees beginning around 2002.

“We didn’t know exactly what we were promising,” Brink said, “but the result was quite extraordinary. Something which was a huge risk to our business – over 20 percent of our employees were HIV infected. They were getting sick and they were dying. You can’t run a business like that. Bringing treatment turned that threat around 180 degrees. In retrospect⁸ now, 10 years later, and you look back it was one of the smartest business decisions we ever made.”

Brink said HIV/AIDS no longer poses a risk to his company. Over 90 percent of employees take an AIDS test every year.

“We encourage our people now to start treatment for HIV as soon as they’re ready. We don’t wait for them to get sick. We don’t wait for them to get TB. We don’t run the risk that they’re going to spread the infection further. We deal with it. Just get on and treat it,” he said.

The cost of AIDS, he said, is manifested in employee absenteeism, in paying benefits when people get sick, disabled or die. What’s more, skilled workers are lost and new workers need to be trained.

“Those costs make up 95 percent of the cost of AIDS. The cost of treatment is only five percent of the cost of AIDS. Why just spend the five percent and avoid the other 95 percent. I mean it’s simple. It’s an absolute no brainer,” he said.

He said when business deals with the burden of disease upfront an HIV infected employee can do the same work as an uninfected worker. Brink says business in Africa should engage with the Global Fund.

Mozambique Health minister – Dr. Alexandre Manguele – also spoke⁹ at the Gift from Africa session at AIDS 2012. He says his country is feeling the burden of HIV among its workforce¹⁰.

“Many people move from Mozambique to South African to work in mining. But many people get sick. They come back to Mozambique very sick usually with AIDS, with tuberculosis and others, but mainly those ones,” he said.

They’re put on treatment when they return home.

“But after a few weeks or months people feel better. They give up the treatment. They disappear and they go back again to South Africa. The same happens with tuberculosis,” he said.

It becomes an endless cycle of ineffective treatment, creating the risk of drug resistance and a further spread of the disease.

The Mozambican health minister called for a regional approach to treating HIV/AIDS, rather than having different drug regimens in each country. He says a partnership between the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and African businesses could help establish an innovative¹¹ approach to tackling those diseases.

 

1 sector   

n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形

参考例句：

• The export sector will aid the economic recovery. 出口产业将促进经济复苏。
• The enemy have attacked the British sector.敌人已进攻英国防区。

2 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

3 tuberculosis   

n.结核病，肺结核

参考例句：

• People used to go to special health spring to recover from tuberculosis.人们常去温泉疗养胜地治疗肺结核。
• Tuberculosis is a curable disease.肺结核是一种可治愈的病。

4 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。

5 brink   

n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿

参考例句：

• The tree grew on the brink of the cliff.那棵树生长在峭壁的边缘。
• The two countries were poised on the brink of war.这两个国家处于交战的边缘。

6 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

7 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

8 retrospect   

n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯

参考例句：

• One's school life seems happier in retrospect than in reality.学校生活回忆起来显得比实际上要快乐。
• In retrospect,it's easy to see why we were wrong.回顾过去就很容易明白我们的错处了。

9 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

10 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

11 innovative   

adj.革新的，新颖的，富有革新精神的

参考例句：

• Discover an innovative way of marketing.发现一个创新的营销方式。
• He was one of the most creative and innovative engineers of his generation.他是他那代人当中最富创造性与革新精神的工程师之一。