China Health Alliance (CHA)

China’s first public-private partnership to address TB and HIV/AIDS was launched by the World Economic Forum’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) in September 2006 in Beijing. The China Health Alliance brought together select companies, the Chinese government, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations in a joint effort to respond to the growing economic and social threat of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in China.

China is ranked second in the world after India for levels of TB infection and is on the edge of a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic with 15 million potential HIV/AIDS cases by 2010. These challenges are compounded by the existence of an enormous migrant workforce. The China Health Alliance aspired to reach company employees, in particular migrant workers, at risk of contracting TB and HIV/AIDS. The goals were to establish and implement HIV/AIDS and TB workplace programmes and to raise public awareness and understanding of the two diseases.

Press release: Global Health Initiative Catalyses New China Health Alliance Against TB and Aids

HIV/AIDS training workshop

On May 29-30, 2008 in Shenzhen, People's Republic of China, the China Health Alliance, together with the Shenzhen Center for Chronic Disease Control, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security, held a training workshop for the private sector. The workshop raised awareness of HIV/AIDS among local businesses and encouraged these organizations to take action against the epidemic in their workplace. HIV/AIDS continues to be on the rise in China, thereby posing a serious threat to the country’s long-term social and economic development. The private sector in China plays a critical role in tackling the epidemic, by supporting effective prevention and control measures in the workplace and protecting its workforce from infection. This first private sector HIV/AIDS training workshop is a model that can be replicated across other cities throughout China in the future.

China TB Toolkit

The GHI worked with a number of partners to develop a toolkit that would help companies in China plan and implement workplace and community-based integrated TB/HIV control programmes. The GHI, with support from the Lilly MDRTB Partnership and with input from the National Centre for Tuberculosis Control and Prevention, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC), and other key partners and companies, developed the toolkit "Protecting Your Workforce and Surrounding Communities from Tuberculosis: An Awareness Building Toolkit on a Comprehensive Approach to TB for Businesses in China". The toolkit encourages companies to adopt an integrated approach to manage TB and HIV co-infections and address resistant forms of TB through workplace and community-based programmes, in partnership with the government and other stakeholders.

The Health team at the World Economic Forum is working with select partners to roll out the toolkit for wider outreach and to establish sustainable partnerships to contribute to current efforts towards the mobilization of businesses in the fight of TB and HIV/AIDS in China.