Aids epidemic hitting mining companies around the world

Epidemic hits mining companies:

From Africa to Russia, from Peru to China, mining companies face a problem: the workers who haul up the earth's riches are coming down with Aids and it is hampering operations at a time of booming demand for minerals. "The epidemic is extremely severe. It's worse than any of us will admit to. There are a lot of undiagnosed cases that don't get reported," says Brian Brink, medical senior vice-president at Anglo American's South African operations. He said Anglo, the world's fourth largest mining group, realised it had a problem at its mines 21 years ago when four of its 18,450 South African workers tested positive for the virus. More than two decades later, with up to one in three infected and South Africa the centre of a global pandemic, the company says its own prevention efforts failed. The irony of global capital using cheap labour and not looking after the health of their workers coming back to haunt them would be delicious except for the fact that AIDS has come at the cost of 30 million lives.