Introduction to health and HIV & AIDS

Poor health can severely affect a household and the livelihood outcomes of its members. As well as affecting the individual and their ability to work, other household members are likely to spend time devoted to caring for the ill, leaving less time available for productive activities or education. This can have long-term effects on a household, contributing to a deeper cycle of poverty. In addition, lack of assets, including education, can reduce resilience to cope with health-related and other shocks, and inhibit access to health care services.

In the health sector, beyond a solely medical issue. Livelihoods frameworks have been used to map out some of the implications of the pandemic to people’s livelihoods, for example:

• a household’s human and financial capital is deeply affected given that HIV & AIDS particularly affects the economically active. Illness and death of household members lead to not only tragedy for the family and long term labour shortages, but also the loss of life skills normally passed on by parents to their children
• women particularly shoulder a disproportionate burden of providing care and support to people living with HIV & AIDS in their own families and the wider community. Children, in particular girls, are often removed from school to look after those that are ill or to supplement household productivity and income
• social capital and people’s access to networks is eroded, due to illness, disease and the stigma that in some places still surrounds HIV & AIDS
• livelihood strategies are altered to often sub-optimal situations , for example focusing on food security rather than income maximisation
• policy and institutional processes have a vital role in determining how the pandemic affects people’s livelihoods.

This section includes recommended reading and a regularly updated list of resources offering insight into how livelihoods approaches have been used to explore and address HIV & AIDS and other health issues.