Aletta Kliphuis
Stefaan van der Borght
Heineken has been offering free and voluntary testing and treat
ment for its African employees and their families since 2001, and
the response so far has been good. About half of the company's
employees in Rwanda, where 9 out of every 100 adults are infected
with the virus, have taken the test offered by the company and,
where necessary, have received treatment.
HIVTESTING: A FAMILY AFFAIR
'The problem, however, is the other half,' says
Stefaan van der Borght, medical advisor to
Heineken International. 'To find out whether
you're reaching the right people with your
treatment, you need to know how many are
infected among the 50 percent who aren't
coming forward voluntarily for testing,' he
says, 'but it wouldn't be appropriate to make
HIV testing mandatory.' To have more infor
mation about those that did not yet come for
voluntary testing, Heineken had to find a
simple way of screening employees and their
families so that they wouldn't feel threat
ened, either by the procedure or by the
result. That's why the company organised an
HIV saliva-testing day, in cooperation with
PharmAccess International, a non-profit
organisation dedicated to the rapid scaling-
up of access to HIV/Aids care and treatment
in resource-limited regions of the world.
'The fact that we were screening people
anonymously and wouldn't be giving out
individual results meant that a lot of people
were willing to take part, after we had made
it clear up-front why we were doing this
screening and how it would be organised,'
says Aletta Kliphuis, Laboratory Coordinator
at PharmAccess International.
The screening was carried out during the
Bralirwa Heineken Family Day, an entertain
ment event organised every two years by the
company for employees and their families.
Organising HIV screening on Family Day
had the advantage of bringing many people
together on the same day, by combining
a serious issue like HIV with entertainment.
The results of the screening sessions at
Gisenyi and Kigali were extremely encour
aging. They showed that, of the number of
employees and their spouses who were
statistically predicted to be infected (assum
ing the prevalence of HIV among employees
of the operating companies and theirfamilies
to be similar to that in the population as a
whole), 80 per cent and 65 per cent, respec
tively, had already had their status con
firmed. Those identified as seropositive are
being closely monitored by the doctor and
will be given treatment through Heineken
where needed.
'People are afraid they will be discriminat
ed against if it becomes known that they
have HIV,' says Stefaan van der Borght.
'We've made every effort to convince them
it isn't so, and these results demonstrate that
that they believe us when we say we don't
discriminate against seropositive individuals.'
'The results also show that there's still a lot
of work to be done,'says Aletta Kliphuis,
referring to the remainder of the unidentified
HIV-positive spouses who have not yet had
their status confirmed. 'The next round of
information on scanning and treatment
options therefore has to be directed at the
spouses of employees.'
Performance of Heineken world-wide
Countries in which the HIV/AIDS programme has been implemented (ultimo 2003):
Burundi, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nigeria and Rwanda
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