{"id":10838,"date":"2003-03-01T11:23:19","date_gmt":"2003-03-01T11:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/?p=10838"},"modified":"2014-05-28T16:10:31","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T16:10:31","slug":"heineken-to-offer-antirerotviral-drug-coverage-to-african-workforce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/10838","title":{"rendered":"Heineken to offer antirerotviral drug coverage to African workforce"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Heineken brewery is at the \u201cleading edge of an effort by multinational [companies] &#8230; to forestall a wipeout of Africa\u2019s labour force,\u201d by guaranteeing antiretroviral drug coverage to its African workforce of 6,000 and their \u201cimmediate dependents,\u201d Forbes reports.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Over the last year, Heineken has offered antiretroviral drugs to its employees in Rwanda and Burundi, and is beginning the programme in Nigeria, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo. Countries with \u201crickety hospitals and laboratories,\u201d such as Sierra Leone and Chad, or countries where Heineken has a minority stake in breweries, such as Angola and Morocco, will be last, Forbes reports.<\/p>\n<p>Heineken has hired not-for-profit PharmAccess, which trains local doctors to administer the antiretroviral drugs, to run the $2 million-a-year programme. In one brewery that employs 600 workers, Heineken was losing an average of 10 workers or dependents a year to AIDS-related deaths, but last year it lost only one worker, who refused the drug treatment. \u201cIf we don\u2019t do anything and say, \u2018Okay, let nature take its toll,\u2019 then within seven years 20% of your senior management (in Africa) is gone,\u201d Hans van Mameren, head of Heineken\u2019s AIDS programme, said. However, the programme \u201chas been a struggle\u201d because only 30% of the workforce in Rwanda has taken an HIV\/AIDS test, Forbes reports. Furthermore, Heineken\u2019s medical staff \u201chas to make up rules as it goes along\u201d because the eight-page company AIDS manual does not specify exactly what constitutes a dependent; in some of the countries it is legal to have up to four wives, according to Forbes.<\/p>\n<p>Heineken must also deal with the Nigerian government, which charges a 20% import duty on all medications, and airlines that do not want to carry HIV-infected blood from countries without good laboratories for testing. Other problems include ensuring that employees do not resell the drugs and ensuring that employees pay a \u201ctoken contribution\u201d toward treatment in order to encourage HIV-positive patients to maintain their drug regimens, Forbes reports. \u201cWe can\u2019t give drugs away for free, or we become an NGO,\u201d van Mameren said (Sansoni, Forbes, 2\/3).<\/p>\n<p>Link:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forb es\/2003\/0203\/064.html\"> http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forb es\/2003\/0203\/064.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heineken brewery is at the \u201cleading edge of an effort by multinational [companies] &#8230; to forestall a wipeout of Africa\u2019s labour force,\u201d by guaranteeing antiretroviral drug coverage to its African workforce of 6,000 and their \u201cimmediate dependents,\u201d Forbes reports. Over &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treatment-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}