Is HIV a time bomb under the mining industry?

By Anna Stablum

LONDON (Reuters) - From Africa to Russia, from Peru to China, mining companies face a problem: the workers who haul up the earth's riches are coming down with AIDS, and it is hampering operations at a time of booming demand for minerals.

"The epidemic is extremely severe, it's worse than any of us admit to, there are a lot of undiagnosed cases that don't get reported," Brian Brink, medical senior vice-president at Anglo American's South Africa operations, told Reuters.

He said Anglo, the world's fourth largest mining group, realized it had a problem at its mines 21 years ago when four of its 18,450 South African workers tested positive for the virus.

Over two decades later, with up to one in three infected and South Africa the centre of a global pandemic, the firm says its own prevention efforts failed.

"We didn't stop this epidemic. In fact if I was to look back and score ourselves, I think we get zero," Brink said.

Worldwide the disease has killed some 30 million people, double the amount of casualties in World War One. Miners are anxious to build on lessons learned in South Africa to try to stem the tide elsewhere.

The world's fourth biggest gold producer, Gold Fields, has estimated the total cost from HIV at around $5 per ounce of gold produced in South Africa, and even with gold trading at around $650 per ounce the cost is significant.

AIDS is growing fastest in Eastern Europe and Central Asia where the number of people living with HIV has grown 20-fold in less than a decade, according to the United Nations.