Does the private sector care about AIDS?

A new (draft) paper by Ramachandran, Shah and Turner tries to better understand the impact of HIV on the private sector. Using data from the investment climate surveys the authors examine manager and worker perceptions regarding how HIV affects the private sector and what private employers are doing (or not doing) in response.

It is estimated that up to 30 million people in Sub-Saharan African are infected with HIV/AIDS, many of them employed in the private sector. The impact of the pandemic on enterprise performance depends on worker attrition due to sickness and death, the corresponding costs to the firm for providing health and sickness benefits, replacement costs to obtain new workers and the impact of HIV/AIDS on worker productivity.

The hope would be that such research would allow us to distinguish the optimal mix of public/private interventions to address this urgent problem.

The authors would very much appreciate receiving any comments or suggestions you might have. Comments are open.