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afrol News, 7 January - Business leaders in the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) are grappling with the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country. Leading executives are now learning about HIV/AIDS, particularly to better address the rights of workers living with the disease. The UN development agency UNDP reports from Brazzaville that the UN peacemakers in the country (UNICONGO) have started addressing the greatest long-term threat to stability and development in the country. In partnership with UNICONGO, the national business association, and under the patronage of First Lady Antoinette Sassou Nguesso, UNDP recently had organised HIV/AIDS awareness workshops for such leaders in the country's two major cities; Brazzaville, the capital, and Pointe Noire. Ms Sassou had called the workshops a major step in raising awareness about the disease and said that the workplace is "one of the ideal places for campaigning against HIV/AIDS," the UN office in Brazzaville reports. More than 100 chief executives and heads of human resources and company medical services had participated in the workshops. "They discussed the impact of the epidemic on business, arrangements for people living with HIV/AIDS, human rights and ethical issues relating to HIV/AIDS in the workplace and practical steps for implementing HIV/AIDS programmes," UNDP says. Participants had urged parliamentarians to integrate HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention activities into plans and budgets in all sectors and to ensure protection of the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and those affected by the disease. To follow up, UNDP was supporting a project on HIV/AIDS in the workplace, and focal points from participating companies were to set up a network to support the initiative. More than 7 percent of adults ages 15 to 49 are living with the deadly disease, according to the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, and more than 50,000 children have lost one or both parents to the epidemic. According to Congolese Health Minister Leon-Alfred Opimbat, 100,000 adults and children were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in the Congo at the end of 1999. In Pointe Noire, the country's economic capital, the prevalence rate increased from 10 per cent in 1996 to 14 per cent in 2000, according to the newest statistics. - Parliament has a role to play in the campaign against this scourge, Jacques Bandelier, interim UNDP Resident Representative told the UN agency. "As representatives of the people, parliamentarians should support and join in steps to promote HIV/AIDS information and awareness," he said, and "they need to enact laws to protect the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and those affected by the disease." According to UNDP, Congolese parliamentarians had adopted a declaration on 1 December, World AIDS Day, making a commitment to support a comprehensive campaign against the epidemic. The silence about HIV/AIDS has yet to be sufficiently broken in Congo Brazzaville, other observers hold. The Central African country has not yet been hit as hard by the pandemic as its southern neighbours and therefore has taken little action to address the disease properly, until now. International organisations and the UN have so far been the main driving forces behind campaigns to fight HIV/AIDS in Congo Brazzaville. Several UN agencies have been training more than 2000 teachers all over the country on HIV/AIDS-prevention education methods involving the active participation of students, the UN earlier has reported. In November 2000, Congo Brazzaville became the first country to benefit from the the pharmaceutic industry's offer to provide Nevirapine - which prevents mother-to-child transmission of HIV virus - free of charge for a period of five years. Nevirapine, donated by Boehringer Ingelheim, was expected to reduce mother-to-child transmission by aproximately 50 percent.
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