Today is World AIDS Day. Posts worldwide are also contributing to raising awareness of the disease and prevention efforts.
In 2011, postal staff will be the target of the HIV-prevention campaign launched by the UPU, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the International Labour Organization and UNI Global Union.
Until now, the campaign has focused on raising the public's awareness of HIV. But the more than 5 million people who work for Posts in the world are also a particularly important audience.
For the ILO, creating a social dialogue among this specific population could contribute to reducing levels of HIV infection in the world and increasing prevention. That's why this UN organization, in association with UNI Global and the UPU, has developed guidelines to help Posts inform their staff about HIV transmission and establish effective workplace policies.
"We see Posts as being often at the forefront of what is happening in the world of work in many countries," explains John Myers, an ILO specialist, based in Geneva. "In addition to facilitating the distribution of public information to customers, our interest in this campaign is how [HIV] programmes and policies could be developed for the workplace."
The guidelines were recently tested on postal staff in Burkina Faso. They will also be tested in Kenya and Cameroon at the beginning of 2011 before being officially adopted and made available to all participating Posts.
Public campaign
About 10 new countries have recently committed to joining the public phase of the HIV prevention campaign, launched in 2009.
Belarus, Djibouti, Uganda, Kenya, Uruguay and France are among the countries that will launch the campaign in their post offices in 2011.
The campaign has so far been rolled out in the Netherlands Antilles, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Estonia, Mali and Nigeria.
The Dominican Republic Post also launched a public awareness campaign in its post offices in October with the help of the country's UNAIDS office.
During the public phase, participating post offices use colourful posters to draw public attention to the issue and give them information on how to protect themselves from HIV. Prevention sheets are distributed and UNAIDS has created a special website.
The UPU has invited all its member countries to issue one or more stamps in 2011 to mark 30 years of a world living with AIDS.