India's leading steel maker Tata Steel has joined a seven member Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS to help provide facilities for conducting HIV/AIDS education programmes. These companies, all operating in developing countries, will use their staff and facilities to expand HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes into the communities where they do business, cooperating with efforts by the United Nations and the local public.

These companies are Anglo-American, ChevronTexaco, DaimlerChrysler, Eskom, Heineken, Lafarge and Tata Steel.

According to UN reports, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, US Ambassador Randall Tobias and US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke made the announcement at the residence of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on December 3, 2003.

They were joined by three international agency heads Dr. Lee Jong-wook of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Richard Feachem of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Dr. Peter Piot of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The corporations are known to have promised to use existing infrastructure to reduce the costs of new and scaled-up national programmes, in respective countries.

"The GBC has always been at the forefront of innovative responses to AIDS through its highly effective advocacy with the business sector," Dr. Piot said. "This new initiative is one of the very first examples of genuine partnership between the public and private sector."

Apart from India, the initiative will be carried out in countries like Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, the Russian Federation and South Africa.