Business Surveys & Reports

 Past Survey & Reports

Since 2003, the GHI produces comprehensive business surveys in the areas of HIV/AIDS (just under 11,000 business executives were involved), Malaria (over 8,000 business executives were involved) and TB (over 11,000 business executives were involved)

Latest Report - ‘Tackling Tuberculosis: The Business Response’

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) of the World Economic Forum has launched a report entitled “Tackling Tuberculosis: The Business Response” (PDF) which provides an overview of the threat posed by tuberculosis to the private sector and makes recommendations for the private sector in the global context.

The report is based on an analysis of responses to questions on TB in the World Economic Forum’s annual Executive Opinion Survey (EOS). The EOS forms part of the Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report, which is intended to assist business leaders and policy-makers in understanding the drivers of, and impediments to, competitiveness in their countries. The survey elicits the views on competitiveness of more than 11, 000 business leaders from 131 countries and has, since 2004, included questions on the perceived impact on the private sector of three major infectious diseases – HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria.

Key findings in the report:
- Nearly one-third of respondents to the 2007 Survey expect tuberculosis to affect their business in the next five years. One in ten expects the effects to be serious.
- Firms in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe are most concerned. Concern has risen steeply in a handful of large countries, including India, Brazil, Turkey, Korea, and South Africa.
- Firms in poorer countries with high TB prevalence are particularly worried.
- Where HIV/AIDS and TB pose twin threats, the impact is expected to be greater still. In some sub-Saharan African countries, over 80% of respondent firms predict that TB will affect their business in the near future.
- While transmission of the disease can occur in workplaces, workforces offer a ready audience for TB education campaigns, and businesses have many skills that can help tackle health problems. There is strong potential, therefore, for businesses to help fight TB.
- Businesses have a variety of motivations for acting to control the disease, from limiting its impacts on employees to strengthening partnerships with other stakeholders to enhancing corporate reputation.
- Hundreds of firms from across the world have signed up to initiatives such as the Global Health Initiative of the World Economic Forum, the Stop TB Partnership and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – bodies that aim to harness business expertise and resources to tackle ill health, primarily in the developing world.
- A number of businesses are engaged in TB control efforts, based on their core competencies, in partnership with national governments, international organisations and other partners in the private sector; yet the momentum is not comparable to business action on HIV/AIDS.

The report was prepared by David E. Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography and Chairman of the Department of Population and International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, with inputs from key experts from the GHI's Non-Executive Board and from the Stop TB Partnership.