De Beers' Botswana subsidiary to subsidize employees' HIV drugs

[plural]

pretty neat if you ask me

Comments

[teaser.livejournal.com]

Aids is a huge problem in Africa (where I live) and it will be more economical in the long run to subsidise those drugs than to lose the proportions of staff that are infected. We're talking about 25% of the population currently infected.(pensions, med insurance etc)

I'm from South Africa and there is a lawsuit going on at the moment between pharmaceutical companies and the government with regards to supplying generic anti-retrovirals to the infected population. Let's just say that the government can purchase the drugs from Thailand for a mere 10% of what Pfizer and Bristol-Meyers supply to us.

not really

[shrike.livejournal.com]

don't look for any deep humanitarian basis there...you won't find it. AIDS is so rampant there it's simple economics. they want their employees to live as long as possible. retraining costs are a bitch *smirk*

not really

[plural.livejournal.com]

these arent skilled laborers
at the most, a number of them are miners.

so replacement costs and retraining costs are in fact practically nil

especially considered with the millions they will be spending on the drugs

[teaser.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. Most of the miners are the sole breadwinners. If they die, their families are left without an income. It is done as a humanitarian gesture. The unemployment rate is high enough to hire anyone off the street to replace them as menial labourers.

Harry Openheimer (now deceased) was a very humane man and this would have been his wish of his company...to help the poor.