More than 110,000, 90% of Anglo American employees and contractors in southern Africa tested their HIV status in 2011. Around 4,730 employees are currently receiving free anti-retroviral therapy (ART), and all employees within Anglo American who test HIV-positive are enrolled in an HIV wellness programme.

For a decade now, Anglo American has offered this comprehensive programme of prevention, care, support and treatment for HIV and AIDS. The programme has been recognised as world leading, and includes education and awareness, condom distribution, and the early diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

Anglo American Chief Medical Officer Dr Brian Brink commented:

"The results we have achieved prove that it is possible to create widespread awareness of HIV/AIDS within an organisation, and take measured steps towards eradicating the burden of disease in the community.

The focus of our HIV/AIDS response is to ensure that every person working for Anglo American and every one of their dependents knows their HIV/AIDS status; that they have the awareness and the education to prevent HIV infection; and they receive the treatment, care and support they need if they are HIV positive.

We believe early diagnosis and treatment of HIV is fundamental and that this can drastically improve the quality of the lives of those people living with the disease. Anglo American’s policy also commits the company to not discriminate against anyone with HIV or AIDS, and to ensure that confidentiality is protected."

He further stresses that the company strives to invest in communities to mitigate the broader social impacts of HIV/AIDS.

Anglo American’s response in providing ARV treatment to its workforce since 2002 has also positively affected the company’s bottom line, according to research conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Aurum Institute for Health Research, which included researchers from the UK, USA, Australia and South Africa.

Data collected over ten years showed that the costs associated with HIV AIDS ($31.2 million for a workforce of approximately 8,000) have been reduced to $27.6 million, and the cost of providing Anti-Retroviral treatment to employees annually, comes to US$1.4 million – clearly demonstrating that both the company and employees are benefiting from this programme.

Company savings emanate from reductions in benefits, absenteeism, training and recruitment of new employees and inpatient and outpatient medical costs.

"We have made notable strides in our fight against HIV/AIDS, and unequivocally proven that providing access to care, support and treatment for HIV, particularly in high prevalence settings is not only the right thing to do, but makes prudent business sense."

Visit our website www.angloamerican.com for more information about Anglo American’s response to HIV/AIDS. A video of an interview with Dr Brink is available for review.

Ends

For further information, please contact:

Media

South Africa
Pranill Ramchander
Tel: +27 (0)11 638 2592

Notes to editors:

About Anglo American:

Anglo American is one of the world’s largest mining companies, is headquartered in the UK and listed on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges. Anglo American’s portfolio of mining businesses spans bulk commodities – iron ore and manganese, metallurgical coal and thermal coal; base metals – copper and nickel; and precious metals and minerals – in which it is a global leader in both platinum and diamonds.  Anglo American is committed to the highest standards of safety and responsibility across all its businesses and geographies and to making a sustainable difference in the development of the communities around its operations. The company’s mining operations, extensive pipeline of growth projects and exploration activities span southern Africa, South America, Australia, North America, Asia and Europe.

Anglo American is the recognised global corporate leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, providing free treatment and care to its employees for more than a decade. As a global business, we recognise the important role we can play in contributing to this response. Anglo American has had the World’s largest private workplace HIV/AIDS programme, in place since 2002. We now manage the largest HIV/AIDS workplace prevention, counselling, testing and treatment programme in the world with more than 2,000 trained peer educators in the workforce. We are pioneers with respect to the treatment of HIV/ AIDS, malaria and TB, introducing free testing and treatment for all our employees in 2002 and, in 2008, we extended this to include dependents.

www.angloamerican.com