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.
