Wake-up to devastating impact of HIV/AIDS - Mrs Kufuor

Accra, Aug. 25, GNA - The First Lady, Mrs Theresa Kufuor on Monday urged the private sector to wake-up to the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS pandemic on business and the labour front.

"While civil societies have strongly demonstrated concern in getting involved in the fight, many employers and employees have shown very little concern," Mrs Kufuor stated in Accra.

The First Lady was opening a three-day pre-congress regional seminar of Democratic Organisation of African Workers' Trade Union (DOAWTU) under the theme: "Promotion and Prevention for the Fight Against HIV/AIDS."

Mrs Kufuor, whose speech was read on her behalf, said the pandemic has devastating effect on socio-economic development since undermined the human resource base.

She said the current low level of awareness, which has been observed in companies leave a lot to be desired.

"What this tell us is that there is unfortunately a general denial of the existence of the spread of the epidemic among employers and employees in several industries and business."

She said institutions, both public and private in Africa, are experiencing increased health bills for sick employees, increases in absenteeism and reduction in productivity due to ill-health arising from the infection and subsequent death.

Quoting World Health Organisation statistics, Mrs Kufuor said Africa might lose up to 50 per cent of its current workforce over the next five to 10 years with the consequential loss of skills, productivity, output and industrial knowledge in all sector if effective measures were not instituted to control the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

"Human resource development is an expensive process... any investment made in that area must be protected by giving the human resource enough education on the causes, methods of transmission, prevention and control of the epidemic," Mrs Kufuor said. She suggested adoption of effective policies to guide response and re-evaluation of attitudes, prejudices and behaviours towards the pandemic.