In Botswana ? where more than one in three adults is HIV positive or already has Aids ? no company is immune from the ravages of Aids. A generation of workers is dying. Some companies are tackling the disease head on and providing healthcare and education.

Some are still doing next to nothing, trying to pretend the problem doesn?t exist. In both cases, the nature of the work has required workers to move away from their traditional lifestyles, fuelling the spread of the disease. In both cases, money is the underlying motive for the firm?s action or lack of action.

?They?re fading away before your eyes, they?re trying to work but they can?t ? it?s heartbreaking to watch.? Mike Hehir, the owner of one of Botswana?s long-established construction companies, is describing the brutal reality of a workforce ? in this case construction workers ? who are dying from Aids. ?They have to keep coming to work, they need the money, what can we do to help, except keep employing them and try not to look,? he asks.

?We lost one of our painters just last week, they dare not say its name, they say nothing, or maybe that it was TB,? adds Tony O?Connell, a partner at the firm. The two Irishmen set up their business in Botswana in 1970, choosing Selebe Phikwe as a base. The town has since become infamous as one of the epicentres of Aids. The life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs are not yet being distributed there and there is precious little prevention work going on. The company ? like most construction firms ? has an extremely fluid workforce ? ranging anywhere from 400 to 1,600 depending on the projects at any one time.

<B>Magnet for prostitutes </B>

All but a handful of the workers are on short-term contracts, meaning that no severance pay or pension is required by law unless they have been in employment for five years in a row. ?If a guy dies after four and a half years there is no obligation to pay him anything,? explains Mr O?Connell. ?But out of compassion we try and help with the cost of the coffin or the funeral.?

The fact that the workers are required to move around a lot without their families is making matters worse. ?We?ve just moved the guys from Selebe Phikwe down to Gaborone, now we?re moving further up north. They have wives in their home villages but you can see the prostitutes in the towns,? Mr O?Connell says.

Both men stress that the disease is costing their business a huge amount of money. ?The downtime is phenomenal. If I take on a labourer, a bricklayer or a carpenter, I factor in an additional cost of 40 % to his wage to cover absence,? explains Mr Hehir.

Despite the desperate state of affairs, the company is not doing anything directly to tackle the issue. ?I?d be scared to talk about it (Aids), even with our very senior workers,? says Mr Hehir. The only way in which the disease is confronted in the workplace is when other organisations come in from time to time to give education seminars. Warrick Lattin, who chairs Botswana?s association of building firms, defends the practices of construction companies, admitting that the very nature of the business makes it difficult to offer better benefits or help distribute drugs.

He also says construction firms ? which are facing fierce competition from Chinese firms in particular ? can genuinely not afford any extra costs, and explains that many are already running on negative cash flow and very tight profit margins. While it may be true that some firms cannot afford to do more and that healthcare is ultimately the responsibility of the government, it does nothing to tackle the tragedy of dying workers.

In 1998, Botswana?s giant diamond firm Debswana became the first company in Africa to offer its workers free anti-retroviral drugs.

It was amongst workers at the diamond mines that the horrifying scale of the Aids pandemic in Botswana first started to become apparent. In some sectors of the workforce, up to 40 % of staff were found to be HIV positive. Louis Nchindo, the firm?s managing director, is blunt about the reason why his firm took action.

?It?s cost-effective. Economists warned us it would be more expensive to do nothing ? if we didn?t do anything it would cost us a lot more at the end,? he explains.

At Orapa ? the largest diamond mine in the world ? 3,932 mine workers and their families live in a purpose-built township adjacent to the mine. By building a hospital at the mine and giving workers free drugs, the company estimates it has prolonged 125 lives so far.

And a high profile education campaign has led to the overall level of prevalence amongst its own workers falling from 27 % in 1999 to 21 % by 2003.

<B>?Medical apartheid?</B>

Contract workers ? which can make up to half of the workforce at any one time ? were not given drugs by the company, in what the mine doctor describes as ?medical apartheid?. These workers now have access to drugs from the mine hospital following the government?s decision in 2001 to pay for drugs for everyone, but their travelling lifestyle makes effective treatment very difficult.

There are about 3,000 contract workers at Orapa, primarily doing work such as maintenance or new construction. The alarmingly high level of HIV infection of 40 % prevalence has not fallen. These workers ? who often have no family base and typically move from project to project ? have fuelled the spread of the disease. The very nature of the insular township ? in the middle of semi-desert wasteland ? is also unhelpful.

?There?s nothing to do here. Everybody knows everybody else. What else is there to keep you busy? That?s why there?s a lot of illness here,? one worker at the mine told. Mr Nchindo, however, is convinced his company can effectively manage the impact of HIV. ?We plan for the future ? we test our people ? we know the levels and trends and can manage the problem,? he says.

The company identifies what they called critical workers ? staff who need a significant amount of training and are vital to keep the business functioning. This may be anything from truck drivers to diamond sorters. ?When somebody in one of the critical areas starts treatment I warn management ? without disclosing who it is ? that one more needs to be trained,? explains Dudley Wang, Orapa?s chief medical officer.

The drugs only typically prolong life for between five and 10 years. The workers, however, are deeply concerned about the watchful eyes of the management. The stigma is enormous and not a single worker at the mine has come forward to publicly declare their status.

Of the 500 or so people being given antiretrovirals, more than half are enrolled at national distribution centres ? meaning they are travelling between 200km and 500km to get the drugs they need rather than going to the mine hospital. There have also been ethical concerns raised about the notion of keeping people alive in order to work.

While the idea of companies giving out drugs because it is a cost-effective solution seems brutal, at least workers are being given the chance of a longer and more productive life.

<B>Genocide of a generation</B>

It?s now more than three years since I met Pepile, but I still think of her often. She died of Aids soon after I met her. Pepile was seven years old, and had been infected when her neighbour raped her. He thought that he would be cured of Aids if he had sex with a young girl.

She lived, and died, in South Africa, the country where there are more people living with HIV/Aids than anywhere else in the world. Globally, the number of those infected is now more than 42 million; by the end of the decade it will have grown by another 45 million. Half of the people living with HIV/Aids are women, more than half are under the age of 24.

Enough numbers? Here are some more: the populations of India, Russia and China make up half of the world?s total population. In all three countries, there are already clear signs of an Aids epidemic taking hold.

Nearly a million people are believed to be infected in Russia, more than a million in China, between four and five million in India. Every time I see those numbers, I think of Pepile. Her father and brother had already died of Aids by the time I met her: the estimate now is that there are 14 million children around the world who have lost one or both of their parents to Aids.

Perhaps you live in a country where Aids is under control. Lucky you. But do you, or people you know, travel to countries where it is widespread? Do people from those countries come to where you live? Globalisation means that viruses can cross borders just as easily as people can.

It is, of course, the poorest countries that suffer most. But whereas in the past it was the weakest who died in epidemics ? usually the very young and the very old ? Aids is different. It kills young adults: the producers, the parents, the farmers. If factory workers die, production falls. If parents die, children are orphaned and their education brought to a halt. And if farmers die, food production suffers, and those who are left behind go hungry.

In 1999, the world?s richest countries made available about $300 m to fight HIV/Aids. Within three years that figure had risen 10-fold to $3 billion. By 2005, it?s estimated that at least $10.5 billion will be needed. The money is needed to buy drugs, to enable people with HIV/Aids to live longer. It is needed to pay for education ? to teach girls how to say no to unwanted or unprotected sex. And it is needed to pay for health care, because all the available evidence shows that where basic health care is deficient, Aids spreads more quickly.

There is, as yet, no known cure for Aids. But there are known ways to slow its spread and to reduce its capacity to destroy communities. The race against what the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called ?the genocide of a generation? is a marathon, not a sprint. When political leaders talk about it openly and honestly, when the world?s richest countries wake up to the scale of the disaster, and when individual men and women learn how to change their behaviour to minimise the risk of infection ? then, and only then, might we able to say that the race is being won.

Robin Lustig Briony Hale