id21 viewpoints

HIV and AIDS, food prices and the need to build bridges between health and agriculture

The many potential impacts of rising food prices have been widely discussed and reported. Stuart Gillespie, from the International Food Policy Research Institute, argues that the impacts on people with HIV and AIDS need much greater attention.

Policymakers and pundits have spent a lot of time discussing how best to respond to rising food prices. However, one aspect of this global food crisis has not received sufficient scrutiny. Unaffordable food has aggravated the vicious cycle between food insecurity and HIV/AIDS, creating an acute crisis on top of an ongoing chronic situation.

Rising food prices could have devastating consequences for many developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where 22 of 30 high-risk countries need external food assistance. Many of these countries also have serious HIV/AIDS epidemics.

Malnutrition severely decreases an HIV-positive person’s ability to cope with antiretroviral drugs, so obtaining the right foods in the right quantities is critical. Individuals who are malnourished when they begin drug therapy may be up to six times more likely to die than well-nourished individuals. As a result, rising food prices threaten to reduce the effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment.

The consequences of rising food prices extend far beyond people living with HIV. Because the virus affects people in their prime working age, many communities have lost their main ‘breadwinners’ and struggle to buy enough food. This has constrained household resources and forced families to sell their already scarce assets. The struggle to buy food has also increased people’s exposure to HIV. Women are moving away from agriculture and entering into casual labour contracts. In many cases, they may be expected to have sex with employers, increasing their vulnerability to infection.

Community coping networks are already struggling and many are at the point of collapse. By 2006, 15.2 million children worldwide had lost at least one parent to AIDS, putting pressure on extended families to provide food and care. Rising food prices have forced many AIDS-affected families to take children out of school to work, and to further reduce children’s meager food intake. Essential care and support for young children and orphans is increasingly compromised, raising the likelihood of malnutrition and irreversible effects on child development.

Rising food prices have also constrained the budgets of organisations and programmes that serve AIDS-affected households and communities, reducing their ability to provide food and nutritional assistance. For example, The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) in Uganda has been running a food support programme for over 100,000 clients since 2002. The World Food Programme, which provides TASO with a limited supply of food, recently had to reduce the number of households it helps and reduce the period of food assistance from 12 to 9 months.

The global food crisis threatens to undo the progress made against HIV and AIDS in recent years. It is critical that governments in hard-hit countries, international aid agencies and civil society organisations work together to address food and nutrition as part of a comprehensive response to the epidemic. Because rising food prices affect all three areas of global HIV and AIDS policy – prevention, treatment and mitigation –it is vital that affected communities and families have supportive ‘safety nets’ to fall back on.

Moreover, the majority of people affected by HIV and AIDS are primarily dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. We need to build bridges between health, social protection and agriculture to generate a more sustainable basis for ensuring support while also improving the incomes and productivity of small-scale farmers.

Stuart Gillespie

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Further Information
Michael Rubinstein
International Food Policy Research Institute
2033 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006-1002
USA
Tel +1 202 8625600
Fax +1 202 4674439
m.rubinstein@cgiar.org

Useful links
International Food Policy Research Institute

'Why food comes first in the fight against HIV and AIDS'

'Poverty, AIDS and hunger: breaking out of Malawi’s poverty trap'

September 2008

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