'Business ill-equipped to deal with AIDS'

South African businesses are ill-equipped to deal with the devastating effects of AIDS in the workplace.

Nearly half have no formal policy for dealing with the disease and most believe the pandemic will have only a moderate effect on their companies.

While experts warn about the effects of AIDS, warning that there are 16 000 new infections every day, SA companies are lagging behind in dealing with the crisis.

This is according to the findings of a survey commissioned by the SA Business Coalition on HIV and AIDS and undertaken by Deloitte and Touche Human Capital.

The project was funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development and arose out of a need for employers to play a more important role in curbing the HIV and AIDS epidemic.

The survey used a sample of 110 companies which were divided into three categories: those with 500 and more employees (large), those with between 100 to 500 employees (medium) and those with fewer than 100 employees (small).

It was found that only 52 percent of companies had formal HIV and AIDS policies. Larger companies were more inclined to have policies while in small companies only 6.5 percent had policies.

About 50 percent of companies regard the disease as having only a moderate impact on their businesses in the years to come.

Several indicate that AIDS would have little or no impact on their businesses. Only about 5 percent said the disease would have an extreme impact.