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Classroom-based Aids education is being directed at about 6000 call
centre staff in Chennai, India, by Standard Chartered Bank. The lessons
will be followed by HIV prevention messages popping up on their
computer screens.
Activists and industry executives have observed that India’s 1.3 million young, free-spending call centre and outsourcing staff are a new Aids risk group, alongside truckers, migrant workers and prostitutes because they are single, mobile and away from the traditionally strict family culture.
‘If you look at the way the pandemic in India is progressing, call centre workers are at risk because they are young and sexually active,’ said Emma Schmitt, spokeswoman for London-based Standard Chartered, one of a number of companies now trying to combat India’s HIV and Aids problem.
A study in February this year found that 11 per cent of 1100 workers at iEnergizer, a call centre and outsourcing business in Noida, have had more than five sexual partners. A separate study found that seven per cent of 1300 adults across the country said they had had more than five sexual partners.
‘We decided one thing we had to do was include in our employee induction a whole new chapter on HIV and Aids so that every new employee would be made aware of this disease,’ said Ashish Mittal, iEnergizer's vice-president of operations. ‘We made it top management policy.’
Intel and Microsoft also have Aids awareness workplace programmes aimed at Indian suppliers. Microsoft and Texas Instruments include HIV and Aids care as an employee benefit, while Intel offers online Aids education, holds HIV health fairs and hands out red ribbons to its Bangalore engineers. Ford has an HIV and Aids education programme, having introduced similar initiatives at its operations in China, Thailand and South Africa.
A handful of Indian companies are taking action, too. Auto parts supplier Apollo Tyres, direct marketer Modicare, Reliance Industries and the huge Tata Group offer a range of clinical care, condom advice and prevention programmes. The game company ZMQ Software Systems, based in New Delhi, offers free downloads of mobile phone games with a health message to its 22 million users. ‘We’re trying,’ said ZMQ’s chief executive Subhi Quraishi, ‘but we're a drop in the ocean.’
Much of corporate India is not as alarmed. Many do not see any impact from Aids in a society where the stigma keeps many patients silent. The Confederation of Indian Industry, a non-profit trade group, says only ten per cent of its 5000 member companies have committed themselves to study Aids as a first step, but few run workplace HIV education or prevention programmes. Shefali Chaturvedi, the group’s director and health chief, said: ‘It is minuscule compared with the task at hand.’
Adult HIV prevalence is low in India at less than one per cent, but the total of 5.7 million sufferers is the highest in the world. The United Nations Aids agency says most patients are heterosexuals.
Activists and industry executives have observed that India’s 1.3 million young, free-spending call centre and outsourcing staff are a new Aids risk group, alongside truckers, migrant workers and prostitutes because they are single, mobile and away from the traditionally strict family culture.
‘If you look at the way the pandemic in India is progressing, call centre workers are at risk because they are young and sexually active,’ said Emma Schmitt, spokeswoman for London-based Standard Chartered, one of a number of companies now trying to combat India’s HIV and Aids problem.
A study in February this year found that 11 per cent of 1100 workers at iEnergizer, a call centre and outsourcing business in Noida, have had more than five sexual partners. A separate study found that seven per cent of 1300 adults across the country said they had had more than five sexual partners.
‘We decided one thing we had to do was include in our employee induction a whole new chapter on HIV and Aids so that every new employee would be made aware of this disease,’ said Ashish Mittal, iEnergizer's vice-president of operations. ‘We made it top management policy.’
Intel and Microsoft also have Aids awareness workplace programmes aimed at Indian suppliers. Microsoft and Texas Instruments include HIV and Aids care as an employee benefit, while Intel offers online Aids education, holds HIV health fairs and hands out red ribbons to its Bangalore engineers. Ford has an HIV and Aids education programme, having introduced similar initiatives at its operations in China, Thailand and South Africa.
A handful of Indian companies are taking action, too. Auto parts supplier Apollo Tyres, direct marketer Modicare, Reliance Industries and the huge Tata Group offer a range of clinical care, condom advice and prevention programmes. The game company ZMQ Software Systems, based in New Delhi, offers free downloads of mobile phone games with a health message to its 22 million users. ‘We’re trying,’ said ZMQ’s chief executive Subhi Quraishi, ‘but we're a drop in the ocean.’
Much of corporate India is not as alarmed. Many do not see any impact from Aids in a society where the stigma keeps many patients silent. The Confederation of Indian Industry, a non-profit trade group, says only ten per cent of its 5000 member companies have committed themselves to study Aids as a first step, but few run workplace HIV education or prevention programmes. Shefali Chaturvedi, the group’s director and health chief, said: ‘It is minuscule compared with the task at hand.’
Adult HIV prevalence is low in India at less than one per cent, but the total of 5.7 million sufferers is the highest in the world. The United Nations Aids agency says most patients are heterosexuals.
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