What makes Nigerian manufacturing firms take action on HIV/AIDS?

The author argues that an understanding of why some firms take action on HIV/AIDS and other do not is essential for policy makers attempting to address the pandemic and involve the private sector. To this end a survey was conducted of over 200 manufacturing firms in Nigeria.

This paper presents the results from that survey. It finds that low number of employers reported knowledge of HIV positive members of their workforce or deaths from AIDS related illness. This is considered to be related to the stigma attached to HIV which is likely to mean that employees would hide their status form employers.

The survey also asked firms whether they had received information about HIV and what their response had been. Fewer than half of the firms received information about HIV/AIDS in the previous year, and only about a third took any action to prevent it. Even fewer reported having discussed the epidemic as a potential business concern. Analysis of the factors influencing those firms that did take action showed five variables to be significant in influencing them to address HIV/AIDS:

• someone currently working for the firm is known to be HIV-positive
• in the last two years, someone who worked for the firm died or left the company due to HIV/AIDS
• the firm received information about HIV/AIDS last year
• the firm is part of a family of firms or an industrial group
• the firm has an on-site medical clinic

The author concludes that first hand knowledge of the impacts of the epidemic, as well as having a source of information on HIV, are likely to influence companies to take action. He states that voluntary counselling and testing and voluntary, anonymous testing could therefore be useful in bringing HIV prevalence to the attention of managers while greater information provision to business could also increase the positive business response to the epidemic.