AIDS and Corporate Responsibility - Essay Example

GLOBAL CHALLENGES. Tackling old and new diseases: AIDS AIDS has come to fit the common understanding of globalization in a number of ways, including its epidemiology and particularly the dominance of certain discourses in the understanding of the epidemic. This is no longer surprising because by the beginning of this century the number of people infected with HIV range from 20 to 35 million, with infections increasing rapidly in much of Africa, south Asia, and the Caribbean. The UN has compared AIDS to the great plagues of history as some countries close to an adult infection rate of 25% and the UN Population Division estimates that life expectancy is falling in twenty-nine African countries due to AIDS. (Altman 2001: 68) By the turn of the century it would become the leading cause of death in Africa, imposing particularly heavy burden because it is most heavily concentrated among the most productive sectors of the population. This underlines the fact that AIDS is no longer a health problem exclusively but that of a development. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as half a billion people are at risk with AIDS worldwide so it has been long recognized as a global problem – a human problem, one which has different effects on societies differing in their histories cultures, levels and ways of life. (Barnett and Blaikie 1992: 14) Although estimates and projections must be taken and interpreted cautiously, there is no doubt that during the next several decades, AIDS will be the leading cause of mortality across all ages in many regions of the world. In some ways the epidemic had become a metaphor for the potential struggle between life and death within sexuality at the beginning of the new millennium. Western AIDS Diffusion While the developing countries are more prone to AIDS with regions such as Africa and Asia being the most vulnerable, the Western countries are not immune to the epidemic. The pattern that characterizes AIDS diffusion in Western and industrialized nations is that cases have been attributed to homosexual or bisexual activity and intravenous drug abuse (primarily in urban centers) with heterosexual and prenatal transmission being responsible for only a small percentage of infections. (Nichols, p. 50) Large numbers of reported AIDS cases could be found in the United States, Canada, and countries in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Latin America. The advantage of the affluent countries, however, over the poorer nations is that they are more able to address the problem immediately in terms of legislative and economic capacities. For instance, back in the 1990s, Western countries launched a large-scale testing for women aimed at the prevention of the birth of infected babies with drug therapies reducing the risk of trans-placental transmission of AIDS. (Guidilliere 2001: 23) Unfortunately, this kind of strategy is feasible only in industrialized countries: its cost prevents its diffusion in developing countries, the major site of vertical HIV transmission. AIDS and Corporate Responsibility The politics of AIDS encompass its regulation through state and international organizations, the development of a vast range of community responses, the political economy of health, and the widespread cultural manifestations. One of the issues dominating this discourse is that of AIDS in the perspective of corporate responsibility. The international business community, for its part, has responded to the UN’s overtures and has engaged in increasing numbers of activities that address the AIDS dilemma. For instance, the Corporate Council of Africa, which is consisted of US business executives and the Southern African Development Community, launched a corporate campaign to fight HIV-AIDS, which successfully raised $40 million dollars for action against the HIV-AIDS in workplaces and communities across the region. (Androf & McIntosh 2001: 190) Glaxosmithkline, responding to the UN’s call of improving access to AIDS-related treatment particularly in developing countries, offered medicines at preferential prices. It also formulated the so-called Positive Action Programme, now in existence for over a decade, which aims to provide more effective education, prevention, enhanced care, support and treatment. (Tulder & van der Zwart 2006: 315) In line with this program, the company supports partnerships with networks of people living with HIV/AIDS, community groups, international agencies, NGOs and governments to intensify community responses to the epidemic. This program has been in existence for more than a decade and has worked in partners with 49 countries. AIDS Cure With potential profits protected by the patent system and a large potential market in industrial countries for an AIDS cure, research by both private firms and non-profit institutes has been intense. The US Patent and Trademark Office for instance is particularly helpful in this regard providing ample rewards for those who could discover the cure for AIDS. However, patent application could hinder research since patent holders can restrict the use of their research to researchers or companies who pay a licensing fee to use it – thus keeping the number of competitors for finding a cure for AIDS to a limited group. The most recent product to hit the market in the treatment of AIDS is the triple-drug therapy. However, the high costs of providing this therapy mean that it will not be of immediate benefit to the 90 percent HIV-infected people who live in low-income countries. Governments, thus, must play a role in order to achieve the substantial international public benefit of vaccines for the disease. The May 1997 announcement of a US goal to produce an effective AIDS vaccine within ten years as a US national goal was a welcome news not only for the people of the United States but for people everywhere, including developing countries. (World Bank 1997: 267) However, the choice of the target date proved to be too optimistic and became a sobering reminder that no vaccine will solve the AIDS problem in the near future. Conclusion The urgency of resolving HIV/AIDS is underscored by the fact that it is spreading rapidly and is not being selective in terms of the economic status of a country. Its prevalence in affluent countries such as the US, argued conservatives, seemed to be a rebuke to those who regard sex as a recreation. Nonetheless, such fact, in effect, introduced an increased mobilization, intervention and research throughout the world. The World Health Organization, for its part, has outlined a global AIDS strategy program seeking the engagement not only of its member countries but also of the international business community and interest groups. At present, there is an existing pledge called the London Declaration on AIDS Prevention among 148 countries to address AIDS as a global problem by implementing the WHO’s global AIDS strategy as define by the Fortieth World Health Assembly. (Alfredsson & Tomasevski 1998: 47) Here, countries are expected to devise their own national programmes to prevent and contain the HIV virus as part of each of the countries’ health systems. As this paper has put forward, AIDS is no longer an international problem – “a problem over there” – but it is in our midst. The disease followed the huge population movements of the contemporary world and is closely related to the nature of global economy, whether these are truckers moving across Zaire and India, women taking up sex work as a means of survival, British tourist in Haiti, soldiers (Cubans serving in Angola; UN troops in Cambodia or the former Yugoslavia) moving across national borders or an American drug user. AIDS is a truly global problem that is both a product and cause of globalization, linking developed and underdeveloped regions of the world. It is therefore necessary to address it with a concerted global solution. References Alfredsson, G. and Tomasevski, K. (1998). A Thematic Guide to Documents on Health and Human Rights. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Altman, D. (2001). Global Sex. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Andriof, J. and McIntosh, M. (2001). Perspectives on Corporate Citizenship. Greenleaf Publishing. Barnett, T. and Blaikie, P. (1992). AIDS in Africa: Its Present and Future Impact. Guilford Press. Gaudilliere, J. and Lowy, I. (2001). Heredity and Infection: The History of Disease Transmission. London: Routledge. Nichols, E. (1989). Mobilizing against AIDS. Harvard University Press. Tulder, R. and van der Zwart, A. (2006). International Business-Society Management. London: Routledge. World Bank. (1997). Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic. World Bank Publications. Read More