Imagine using your financial modeling and negotiating skills to secure affordable HIV/AIDS drugs from pharmaceutical companies. Imagine implementing a company-wide policy offering health care services to your employees in your emerging markets operations, increasing life expectancy, and decreasing mortality.
Imagine securing a safe, healthy and efficient labor force. Imagine developing a business plan that maps out how to best implement a nation-wide anti-retroviral drugs program. Imagine using market segmentation to serve pressing health needs of women and children. These are all on-going activities discussed by prominent business and non-profit leaders at last week's "Business and the Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic" panel, hosted by the Africana Association, Managers in International Development, and SIPA's Pan-African Network. By highlighting their experiences, the panelists considered the vast applicability of business resources and skills to fight HIV/AIDS.
The panel discussion, attended by over 60 students from across the university and the city, provided an opportunity for public and private organizations to share initiatives taken and challenges encountered in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The engaging panel discussion began with sobering reminders that 8,500 people continue to die from AIDS and 14,000 are infected with the HIV virus every day. The reality is that the epidemic is leading to a population of orphans and an entire missing generation in some countries. This, combined with the fact that the World Health Organization has not lived up to its commitment to get at least 3 million sufferers on ARV treatment led Trevor Neilson, Executive Director, Global Business Coalition (GBC) on HIV/AIDS, to the conclusion that this years World AIDS day is a sad one.
The statistics are clear indicators that more work needs to be done to develop new methods and approaches to fight the pandemic. The good news is that we have begun taking it seriously, several organizations are initiating programs to ensure that this trend does not continue, and there is a tremendous amount of opportunity for private enterprises and individuals to apply their business prowess to tackling numerous unexplored dimensions to the problem and facilitating its solution.
Trevor Neilson spoke about the 200+ member companies worldwide that are dedicated to meeting the challenges of the AIDS pandemic through access to the business sector's unique skills and expertise. For the first time at Columbia Business School, Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS publicly announced the creation of the first measurement system for business and AIDS. The new Best Practice AIDS Standard is a quantitative self-assessment tool that measures a company's involvement and guides business strategies for addressing the AIDS pandemic. The Best-Practice AIDS Standard (B-PAS) tool is built upon experiences that companies have had in designing AIDS programs and global initiatives. Some of the primary components to the standard include Corporate Philanthropy, Business Associates and Supply Chain Engagement and Advocacy and Leadership.
Mr. Neilson also highlighted the need for a public-private approach to fighting the disease. There is no way any government or company, by itself, can tackle this disease given its grave multidimensional impacts. Samir Khalil, Executive Director of HIV Policy & External Affairs, Europe Middle East & Africa, Merck & Co. presented Merck's HIV/AIDS program in Botswana, the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP) to which Merck contributes diagnostic and testing services, resource centers at hospitals and daycare facilities for orphans, grants to fund local initiatives, health car worker training and free drugs.
Merck's success in Botswana is an example of the benefits of the private/public sector partnership. Barbara Bulc, Director of the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, explained how the Clinton Foundation is changing the economics and management of AIDS care and treatment. By negotiating with drug companies, mobilizing financial resources, and helping governments develop business plans, business and logistics systems, and management and training programs, the foundation helps countries implement effective large-scale integrated care, treatment and prevention programs.
Also presenting was Kim Nichols, Executive Director of the African Services Committee, a community-based organization in New York City dedicated to improving the health and self-sufficiency of the African community in the US. She highlighted partnerships with businesses which helped provide not only HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs but housing, social and legal services to thousands of African immigrants and refugees living in the U.S. Some of the HIV services provided by the ASC include HIV community outreach, group HIV prevention training, HIV counseling and testing, and HIV early intervention services.
The panel was moderated by Lee Branstetter, Professor of International Business at Columbia. Recognizing the wide-reaching nature of the epidemic, the panel was generously supported by Institute of African Studies, Health Care Industry Association, Sanford Bernstein Center's Student Leadership & Ethics Board, GBA/COVAP, Greater China Society, South Asian Business Association and Latin American Business Association.
The panelists urged us to use our business skills and professional training to collaborate with other passionate people from various sectors, industries and countries. They asked us to think big and to capitalize on the great opportunity we, as future business leaders, have to join the multisectoral fight against AIDS.
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