Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), Saturday 6 August 1988, page 1


How to cope with AIDS in the workplace

From JOAN MORRIS,

Health Repoitor,

hi Hobart

Few Australian employers have prepared for the effects of AIDS, the inaugu

ral "business" session of the third national AIDS conference was told in Hobart yesterday.

Employers should not require a catastrophe before planning how to deal with AIDS, Dr Robert Hart, the director of occupational health and environmental health and safety at Broken Hill Pty Ltd, Victoria, said. Every major employer in Australia would have to develop strategies to deal with AIDS among employees. Few had prepared for the effects of AIDS on their workforces, because few had had to face the consequences of having an AIDS employee.

But ordinary workplace contact did not pose any danger. It was not a work

place health problem, apart from the

health-care industry.

For this reason, workers with AIDS or HIV infection had to be protected from discrimination or possible stigma from

fellow workers, unions, employers or cli

ents.

"The temptation for AIDS or HIV-infected employees to be isolated physically or socially in order to relieve the anxiety of other workers must be resisted, he said.

Ignorance and fears of the workplace were best dealt with by education.

Companies which sent workers overseas needed to have policies to deal with injury or illness requiring emergency treatment and/or intravenous therapy.

BHP frequently sent staff overseas. In areas of high risk, such as countries with inadequate screening of blood supplies, it provided its employees with equipment to ensure that any necessary injections were sterile, that early evacuation to satisfactory medical care was organised for medical emergencies, and that advice was given on casual sexual encounters in areas with high incidence of female trans

mission of the virus.

Employees could decline such postings, he said.

Dr Hart pointed out that there was

great potential economic significance to Australian business in the age groupings of AIDS cases - 22 per cent were between 20 and 29; 42 per cent between 30

and 39.

"This means that 64 per cent of cases occur in the most productive age groups, and this has very great economic significance for industry in the future," he said.

The second speaker, economist Mr Paul Gross, foundation director of Health Economics and Technology Assessment Corporation, said the costs of AIDS to Australia in 1988 had been calculated at between $60 million and $65 million, including hospital, medical, drugs and research costs.

"But indirect costs are the real story," he said. "The indirect costs work out at $167 million to $233 million, between three to six times the direct costs.

"That is the tragedy of AIDS. If you add the costs of the informal caring network, and the loss to the community of the individual's contribution, you are staring at indirect costs that dwarf the direct costs by orders of magnitude."

Dr John Stocker, managing director of the Australian Medical Research and Development Corporation, made some suggestions about how Australia could truly "make AIDS our business", by utilising the country's well-developed resources in chemistry, molecular biology and virology "to make an original contribution to products for AIDS therapy".

Australia was in a position to take advantage of its expertise, to develop an "AIDS industry" in such fields as vaccines, therapeutic drugs, diagnostics, private hospitals and nursing homes, production and sale of protective and disposable goods, "snake oil" cures, educational publications and fringe partici

pants.

His expertise was in the discovery and development of pharmaceutical drugs and diagnostics, so his suggestions for

AIDS-related business activities were aimed in this direction.

Australia had a world reputation in biotechnology, and it was in this field that pharmaceutical companies were moving in drug development. But most

Australian biomedical scientists traditionally worked in institutions, and depended for their funding on grants locally

and from overseas.

This led to a danger peculiar to Australia in a tendency to "spill the beans", in their efforts to gain notice - and further grants-for their work.

"This causes enormous pressure to publish or present data at an early stage in its development to secure international literature priority," he said. "In contrast, scientists working in the environment of a pharmaceutical company march to a different drum." Their emphasis was on developing and demarcating a new research area, and filing solid patents to "protect their intellectual property".

Tliis mentality was needed in Australia to gain access to a world market for its

discoveries.

"Nowhere is this more apparent than in a disease like AIDS," he said.

Wran speaks. - Pag* 2