New York, New York, June 13Ñ Wednesday nightÕs awards ceremony of the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS was repeatedly disrupted by AIDS activists from ACT Up and by the group Health GAP. The groups were demanding that multinational corporations pay for medicines for employees in developing countries who are facing death from HIV disease.Ê Coca-Cola Corporation was a particular target of the demonstrators. Coca-Cola, after previously promising to extend HIV/AIDS coverage to all its workers in Africa, ÒrecalculatedÓ and now offers such coverage to only a minute percent of its African workforce.

AIDS activists have condemned Coca ColaÕs treatment of their African workers as Òmedical apartheid.Ó Coke currently only provides HIV/AIDS health care coverage to its 1,500 Òdirect employees,Ó neglecting the rest of the more than 100,000 workers who bottle and distribute Coke products under exclusive licensing agreements in Africa.Ê Activists say that at a modest cost, Coca-Cola can prevent further infections and needless deaths among the men and women that bottle, can, and distribute Coke products throughout Africa.

ÒCoke is profiting off of workers who are dying, and it would cost so little to provide life-sustaining treatment, compared to the amount of money Coke is making,Ó according to ACT UP member Eustacia Smith.

Every day 8,000 people with AIDS die because AIDS drugs arenÕt available. Coke is the largest private employer in Africa. Its most profitable markets in the continent are in sub-Saharan Africa, where 26 million people are infected with HIV.

ÒCoca-Cola trumpets their own efforts to provide condoms and display AIDS awareness posters, while continuing to sit on their hands while workers die,Ó said Mark Milano of Health GAP.Ê ÒCoke executives are making a killing off the labor of Africans, while workers with HIV and their families are left behind.Ó

Health GAP and ACT UP have demanded that Coke implements HIV/AIDS workplace policies that include non-discriminatory policies, awareness and prevention programs, confidential voluntary counseling and testing, and the provision for treatment, care, and support for affected/infected employees and their dependents.

Robert Lindsay, vice president for public affairs for Coca-Cola Africa who was at the awards dinner, said: ÒWhat weÕve been asked is to provide treatment to the independent businesses we work with across the continent. ... The reality is this is not possible.Ó Coca-Cola has similarly tried to dodge responsibility for the murder of labor activists at its bottlers and distributors in Colombia and the treatment of laborers at plantations of Guacimal, S.A., Haiti, with the same argument that they are not direct employees.

It seems that those who are part of what can be described as the AIDS Services Industry and its philanthropic partners have a never-ending need to congratulate themselves and to give each other awards.Ê Last nightÕs gala emceed by Dan Rather and attended by Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton, Dick Holbrooke, and other luminaries, was nothing unique in that respect.Ê

However, as Sharonann Lynch of both Health GAP and ACT UP New York said, ÒCrumbs from Coca-Cola and other corporations for workers dying with AIDS are nothing to celebrate. Companies are patting themselves on the back, but they have skirted their most fundamental obligation Ñ paying for treatment for their HIV positive workers.Ó