Clicks Group Employee Wellness and TB/HIV Care
work together to fight TB and HIV
30 April 2010
TB/HIV Care representative, Desiree Schouw, answers questions on TB
and HIV at the wellness day held at Clicks Head Office Cape Town
The call for business to get involved in the fight against TB and HIV is not new. In 2004, then Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, commented on the “enormous impact which corporate action can have in the fight against HIV/AIDS”i. One of the ways the Clicks Group has answered this call is through a long-standing relationship with TB/HIV Care Association.
Inspired in 2007 by a series of models for the future of HIV in South Africa based on actuarial data collected by the Metropolitan Group, Rozelda Elliot, the Employee Wellness Co-ordinator for the Clicks Group, began to seek ways to address TB and HIV in her own company. It wasn’t long before she had contacted TB/HIV Care Association and begun a partnership that still endures today.
Rozelda Elliot, EWP Co-ordinator, draws the winning ticket for the spot prize raffle held at the Wellness Day |
In 2008, 90 Clicks Store Managers in the Western Cape were trained by TB/HIV Care Association on TB and HIV - covering topics such as how TB and HIV are spread and prevented; and the signs, symptoms and treatment of each disease. The idea behind training managers was to enable them to conduct further training on TB and HIV within their own divisions, and to thereby increase the spread of information exponentially. As a result, 545 staff members have since been trained on TB and HIV in the period from 2008 to 2010.
The latest collaboration between TB/HIV Care Association and the Clicks Group saw 23 people being referred for TB testing at local clinics. The catalyst for this intervention was a series of three wellness days held over the period of the 15th – 22nd April 2010 at Clicks Head Office Cape Town, and the two Clicks and UPD distribution centres in Montague Gardens.
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The Wellness Days saw a variety of health and wellness stakeholders participating, and TB/HIV Care joined their ranks to offer information on TB and HIV. Thanks to a partnership with the Chapel Street Clinic in Woodstock, anyone who visited the TB/HIV Care stall or the counselling and testing teams and showed signs or symptoms of TB, was referred to the clinic to be tested for TB in a safe environment.
The Clicks Group’s commitment to fight TB and HIV does not end here. Together with the Link Pharmacy Group they have pledged 470 pharmacy clinics as venues to provide free tests throughout the HIV counselling and testing campaign (HCT) recently announced by the National Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi.
A variety of business organisations, including the South African Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS (SABCOHA), and the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have identified the need for businesses and the private sector to become partners in the strategy to combat HIV, and now TB. Several studies by academics and audit firms alike have also noted the cost of HIV/AIDS to businesses’ bottom lines. Clicks Groups and TB/HIV Care Association are actively demonstrating how the collaboration between the private sector and NGOs can have a critical role in curbing the effects of TB and HIV.
Sources:
World Economic Forum and Global Health Initiative Report: Business and HIV/AIDS: Commitment and Action? (2004-2005). p.8.
TB/HIV Care Association, tel: 021 425 0050, email: alison@tbhivcare.org
Clicks Group Employee Wellness, tel: 021 460 1768 email: rozelda.elliot@newclicks.com
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