GENEVA, July 11 (Xinhuanet) -- HIV/AIDS has huge impact on the labor force and the impact is measurable in macroeconomic and social terms, says the International Labor Organization in a report published Sunday.

    As to macroeconomy, in countries where the impact was measurable between 1992-2002, the rate of growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) was lower by 0.2 percent per year and the rate of growth of GDP per capita was lower by 0.1 percent per year,says the report, the first global analysis of HIV/AIDS impact on the world of work.

    The report also notes that HIV/AIDS will have a multiple impacton women in the countries most affected by the epidemic, since their work time will be displaced by the fact that they are primary caregivers whether they work productively inside or outside the home.

    In addition, young women are now showing the largest increases in HIV-prevalence rates, says the report.

    What's more, where women are responsible for subsistence farming (across most of Africa), the burden of caring for family members ill with AIDS, the demand to earn income to replace the lost income of the person living with AIDS, and the burden of carefor other family members, notably young children and older persons,may displace available time for farming, which jeopardizes their capacity for providing food to the household, and the well-being of all household members.

    The report says the impact of HIV/AIDS will be especially severe in the educational and health sectors, where the proportion of educators and health care providers dying of HIV/AIDS may reachas high as 40 percent by 2010.

    In rural areas of the most affected countries, HIV/AIDS is worsening the economic situation of impoverished rural households,exhausting the ability of rural communities to withstand shocks, and seriously aggravating existing food insecurity, the report adds.

    Children will suffer from a lack of parental care and guidance,or find themselves forced to abandon schooling and seek work that not only threatens their physical well being but will deprive them of education, skills and training, thus threatening the goals of eliminating child labor and promoting sustainable development, it says.

    According to the new ILO report, an estimated 36.5 million people of working age have HIV and by next year the global labor force will have lost as many as 28 million workers due to AIDS since the start of the epidemic.

    The report, prepared on the basis of newly developed demographic and epidemiological data from the United Nations and other sources, will be presented at the 15th International Conference on AIDS in Bangkok, Thailand, on July 11-16. Enditem