Search results

HIV/AIDS has implications of varying severity across a wide spectrum of businesses in South Africa. Financial accountability is therefore required to enable investors and other stakeholders to be advised regarding the effect of HIV/AIDS on company performance and to make informed decisions. This paper explores financial accountability with regard to HIV/AIDS. It investigates top management’s awareness, coping strategies and financial information (available and required) that is communicated internally and to stakeholders. Its empirical content concentrates on major public companies that operate in industries in which HIV/AIDS is known to be present. It reveals that companies are informed and pragmatic. However, many do not engage in legally permissible prevalence testing, and thereby frustrates attempts at a clear definition of the problem and at forecasting. Most companies are therefore unable to project what the effect of HIV/AIDS on future performance and profitability will be. The paper concludes that, although HIV/AIDS receives attention in terms of corporate governance, there is an absence of financial accountability via annual reports and financial statements. Many companies have no information available, while others may elect not to disclose it.

The mining sector represents a significant portion of the South African economy. The recent announcement of the proposed black empowerment bill for the mining sector caused share prices to plummet. This reaction, in turn, caused a marked devaluation of the rand against other major currencies. Anything that impacts negatively on the mining sector will therefore have an adverse effect on the South African economy. This paper considers the affect that HIV/AIDS will have on the mining sector and, by implication, on the South African economy. Consideration is given to whether mining companies manage this risk properly and whether it is reasonably accounted for and disclosed in the financial statements. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations made regarding HIV/AIDS risk management and how HIV/AIDS issues can be disclosed fairly. Although the management teams of mining companies have introduced a HIV/AIDS risk‐management process and have commenced the disclosure of HIV/AIDS information, the disclosure is still far from adequate.

A growing number of studies have concluded that South Africa has one of the highest cases of HIV infections in the world. With the epidemic continuing to evolve at an alarming rate, the government of South Africa has regarded the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a developmental and socio‐economic policy issue. This study explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on food demand in South Africa. Food demand functions were estimated using time‐series data for the period 1970 to 2000.Simulation analyses were undertaken to examine “with AIDS” and “without AIDS” scenarios. Unlike previous empirical findings, which dwell on the major negative impact of HIV/AIDS on food demand patterns in South Africa, this study foreshadows a more mixed outcome of both negative and positive impacts on the demand patterns for specific food types in South Africa as consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and recommends policy changes.

Discusses factors emerging from research into the management and organizational processes involved in developing services for HIV/AIDS which affected the speed and character of the response made by health authorities. An early response was promoted by perceived high local prevalence, an existing service infrastructure, and high status individuals “championing” the issue and helping to foster a mobilizing sense of crisis. Responses were shaped by the diverse interests and perspectives of those developing services; the lack of established guidelines for treatment and service delivery, and ring‐fenced funding. The idiosyncratic nature of initial service development has sometimes made later strategic choices difficult. If the momentum of service development is to be sustained, HIV/AIDS needs to be integrated into mainstream service provision and managers need improved information about local prevalence and evaluation of service initiatives.

The Central Asian republics are among the countries which currently experience the world’s fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. At the same time, they are threatened by the re‐emergence of tuberculosis (TB), with the highest rates of new TB cases among the Former Soviet Republics. One of the groups that is at highest risk from TB and HIV/AIDS and that is, at the same time, the major regional drivers of the epidemics is the prison population. Up to an estimated third of HIV/AIDS infected persons in Central Asia are within the penitentiary system. At the same time, prisons are known to be the ‘epidemiological pump’ for TB in the region, fuelled by overcrowding, poor ventilation and inadequate nutrition. Both AIDS and TB incidence and death rates among prisoners are much higher than in the civilian population, with an alarming rising trend. Prison health is a key issue of public interest, especially in the context of an epidemiological crisis as in Central Asia. This paper looks at the spread of HIV/AIDS and TB in the region and analyses the role prisons play as one of the main multipliers.

This paper sets out to contrast the ubiquitous, globalizing influence of new public management (NPM) with an alternative approach more attuned to the local needs of communities, especially those with health and economic problems in less‐developed countries. The Ugandan Community‐led HIV/AIDS Initiative is drawn on to contrast the operation of “bottom‐up” accountability – whereby the deliverers of public services are accountable primarily to the communities they serve – with the usual expectations of an NPM model, which instead focuses on holding public sector managers accountable to their political masters.

A hermeneutics approach is adopted to interpret evidence from: government policy documents; interactions and interviews with public sector actors at national, district and community levels; and one author's own pre‐understanding from his role with the Uganda AIDS Commission.

This Ugandan illustration suggests potential benefits from importing workable aspects of NPM reforms while at the same time exploring other service delivery and accountability options that fit the needs of target communities in less‐developed countries.

Uganda's adoption of the outlined community‐led approach has important implications for the (ir)relevance debate around NPM reforms in developing countries. However, as this paper is based on a single initiative in one country, it represents only a first step towards understanding the potential for innovative public sector models to add value in developing countries.

The findings point to community‐led approaches, such as those adopted in Uganda, as a promising alternative to NPM models for improving public service delivery and financial accountability in less‐developed countries.

Communitarian and social capital theoretical perspectives are drawn on to analyse novel public sector management and accountability mechanisms and compare the findings with dominant NPM perspectives. The research context contributes new understanding of how NPM reforms might be adapted and supplemented to benefit developing nations.

Individuals' health is considered one of the major determinants of higher levels of productivity and economic development. Over the past century, the widespread occurrence of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) has been a serious threat to economic development around the globe and has caused a dramatic fall in the life expectancy rate in many nations. This is the first study that examines the impact of HIV prevalence on health expenditure at the national level employing two linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models and simultaneously tests the long-run and short-run relationship for five selected developed countries. The authors employ annual data from 1981 to 2016. They find that HIV prevalence has a significant impact on health expenditure in the short-run and long-run in all five countries using the linear model and four of the countries in the nonlinear model. They find that HIV/AIDS prevalence has a significant short-run and long-run asymmetric impact on health expenditure of almost all selected developed economies.

The authors are employing two linear and nonlinear ARDL models and simultaneously test the long-run and short-run relationship for five selected developed countries.

The authors find that HIV/AIDS prevalence has a significant short-run and long-run asymmetric impact on health expenditure of almost all selected developed economies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research work that empirically examines the link between HIV prevalence and health expenditure for this group of countries using linear and nonlinear ARDL approach for short run and long run.

This chapter outlines the enormity of the task of achieving universal primary education in Africa with over 40 million children currently out of school in sub-Saharan Africa. Several questions are addressed with reference to global trends and using World Bank and national enrollment data. For example: Why does Africa seem unable to secure “education for all” for school-age children? Is it simply the relative poverty levels of African countries, or are there grounds for thinking that other factors might be at work? And, what challenges do these countries face in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic? This chapter also notes that some countries are at higher risk of not achieving universal primary completion and gender equality by 2015. What must politicians and policy-makers do to reverse these trends? As observed by Blair's Commission for Africa, the challenges are immense and if Africa continues on its current path then the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for halving poverty, universal primary education and the elimination of avoidable infant deaths in sub-Saharan Africa will not be delivered in 2015 but instead between 100 and 150 years late. The challenge is to find short- and long- term policies and solutions to address this global policy.

Partnerships between public health organizations and private corporations may be best positioned to address many of the major healthcare challenges currently facing nations across the globe. Strategically chosen partners can collaborate and share resources to develop and successfully implement valuable solutions to achieve common goals. The key is using innovation methods to effectively leverage the best resources provided by each partner. The authors explain the value of public-private partnerships while also providing insight into how specific tactics from projects undertaken by their international communications firm, Fleishman-Hillard, assisted partnerships in their efforts to develop innovative solutions to address healthcare challenges.

Purpose – In this chapter, we compare the cases of India and Russia as they address the spread of HIV-AIDS in their respective countries. The countries, former Cold War allies, have embarked upon a path toward economic liberalization in the past decade and a half. In Russia's case, this came with political upheaval. In India's case, liberalization started with tentative steps and reached more full-blown economic and social liberalization in recent times. Both have also had to deal with the rapid spread of HIV-AIDS within their societies which brings with it the threat of derailing recent economic progress.

Methodology – A comparative case-study method is used to make comparisons between these countries which are facing similar challenges but whose approaches to them differ.

Findings – The chapter looks at how the government and a tradition-bound society in both cases have addressed the crisis. While both governments are recently becoming more serious about sustainable responses to the spread of the disease, in India's case this response has been buttressed by social liberalization unleashed by recent economic success.

Contributions to the field – We argue that social liberalization, as in the case of India, has made an impact in terms of the spread and acceptance of prevention education. This has positive implications for those countries where liberalization has changed traditional societies and where these changes are being used to battle the HIV-AIDS crisis.