Teamwork for Health: German AIDS assistance for the countries of Africa has many faces

In 2001, the BMW Group launched its own campaign against HIV/AIDS – the first company in South Africa to do so. BMW provides education, cares for employees who are infected or have contracted the disease, and even provides free treatment with anti-retrovirus drugs. The campaign has been successful: 96% of the company’s employees have taken a voluntary HIV test. Anyone who tests positive can now protect their family and obtain medical care. At 6%, however, the infection rate is far below the national average – a result of successful health education. The company is also active outside the factory: for two years now, a community centre with a day clinic has been looking after up to 5,000 people a month in a township near Pretoria. In 2007, BMW and the South African LoveLife Trust built a youth centre dedicated to AIDS prevention near Knysna.

Elsewhere, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a project unique in Africa, patients are being treated with locally manufactured generic drugs with the support of the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Called Afri-Vir; the tablets are produced by a private company called Pharmakina in Bukavu and, while identical in composition to branded drugs, are sold much more cheaply. Its AIDS centre not only provides the drugs, but also offers patients examinations and treatment. The GTZ installed all equipment and furniture at the diagnostic centre and trained the 14 staff in counselling patients and using the laboratory. Pharmakina and the GTZ shared the cost of the machines to manufacture Afri-Vir. Now the two partners intend to move on to large-scale production. The World Health Organization is currently testing the drug with the aim of releasing it for export. 

Finally, when Fokko Doyen, Fleet Manager at Lufthansa Cargo AG, heard about the Mothers Mercy Home for the first time, he spontaneously decided to help the little AIDS orphanage on the outskirts of Nairobi. Together with colleagues, he founded the aid initiative called Cargo Human Care – one of many private initiatives from Germany. Since 2004, they have been supplying medical equipment and drugs both to the home in the Kenyan capital and to a nearby SOS Children’s Village. The aid supplies are transported free of charge on Lufthansa cargo flights. In the meantime, the planes are also carrying doctors from all over Germany who take it in turns to stay in Nairobi for several weeks. Some 1,200 young patients had been treated by Cargo Human Care by May 2007.

These stories are abridged from an article in Deutschland Online. I first heard about the Cargo Human Care project when I was flying on Lufthansa earlier this year; the project was profiled in the company’s inflight magazine. I was looking for that story, when I found this article, which also highlights some other excellent German initiatives in Africa.

 


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