For two decades, AIDS activists and officials have implored the private
sector to join the fight against AIDS. In reality, that effort remains
overwhelmingly dependent on public funding and public officials. In all
but a few cases, the private sector has been a minor player. The
Product Red campaign is one sign that this may finally be changing -
but much more needs to be done.The drug industry, often in partnership with major economic
players such as oil companies, is actively involved in research,
diagnostics, counselling and treatment in places where the pandemic is
most severe. Large corporations provide high-quality monitoring
and treatment programmes for their employees and, sometimes, for their
families.But for reasons of treatment cost and the scale of effort required,
these initiatives have taken a long time to get going. Private
companies must urgently be encouraged to increase their efforts to take
some of the load off governments.Private companies must be encouraged to increase their efforts to take
some of the load off governments.Some of the responses needed are more obvious than others.
A more general problem that needs to be discussed and confronted is the web of sexual relationships that exists
within some companies.There are professional skills in the private sector that have not been
significantly tapped. In their enlightened self-interest, private
companies could be working with governments to apply their expertise in
large-scale logistics and financial management to the mammoth task of
constraining the epidemic. There are many other impediments to private-sector engagement,
particularly AIDS politics and suspicion among public officials and at
non-governmental organizations. Business expertise would be more
readily brought to bear on the pandemic if public-health officials and
other parties could agree among themselves what administrative actions
need to be taken to fight AIDS.There is a nagging concern among AIDS officials that global
attention may be drifting away from the pandemic, at a time when the
need to confront it aggressively has never been greater.