Breaking the taboo of AIDS
Harold Bokaba used to run the customer help desk for delivery drivers at Unilever's Boksburg plant in Johannesburg, South Africa. As the HIV/AIDS crisis began to worsen at the beginning of the 1990s, he started an HIV/AIDS support group with others at the plant and became a volunteer in his spare time.
Recognising that truck drivers picking up prostitutes at the roadside is one of the key ways the HIV virus is transmitted from community to community, Harold started handing out condoms to the truck drivers who passed through the distribution centre.
Sub-Saharan Africa has 10% of the world’s population but over 60% of the world's HIV/AIDS. HIV prevalence is highest in southern Africa, where at least 10% of the population is infected.
Prevention programmes
Unilever employs around 50 000 people at 30 sites in 11 sub-Saharan countries. It has developed HIV/AIDS prevention programmes both for employees and the wider community. The company takes a localised approach with programmes ranging from awareness initiatives to voluntary counselling, testing and, where appropriate, treatment and care.
Working in partnership
Unilever is working with other companies to increase the effectiveness of its HIV/AIDS programmes. For example, the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, formed in 1997, is starting to play an influential role in South Africa, where nearly five million people are HIV positive or have AIDS and where 1 500 new infections occur every day. In 2004, the coalition launched a toolkit, largely modelled on Unilever's own management guide, to help small and medium-sized businesses to create their own HIV/AIDS programmes.
For Harold Bokaba, trying to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS has become an all-consuming part of his life. He has become a full time HIV/AIDS worker for Unilever and his work takes him to schools to talk about the dangers of unprotected sex, to community centres, churches, offices and factories.
Read the full story by downloading the pdf in the links below.
Note: The pdf was written in 2004. For more information on our approach to tackling HIV/AIDS, please see the HIV/AIDS section of our online Sustainable Development Report 2007.
