Food To Fight AIDS
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An opinion piece in the Guardian Weekly argues that it’s time Western donors regard food and nutrition as equally important elements to fighting AIDS and other illnesses as the drugs themselves.
Some excerpts below, the full piece is here.
I wish that all the Aids experts and politicians who gathered in Mexico City last week could have been with me two years ago when I met a young man in a nameless, dusty village in Malawi. It was easily the most memorable encounter of my life – royalty, heads of state, and celebrities included. The man was in his mid-30s and badly emaciated. His eyes were pink at the edges and I remember thinking they were somehow on fire with rage.
But there was really no anger in him – just exhaustion, anguish, confusion. After gently pushing ahead of the others in the crowd, he asked: “Why are you keeping me alive? Why give me these Aids medicines? I am too hungry and weak to work and care for my family. Why torture me this way?”
Tens of billions of dollars have been pledged to combat the disease, yet donor countries have largely overlooked the role of nutrition, somehow managing to ignore both the scientists and the beneficiaries. The donors have been asked for help often enough and there are UN and NGO projects out there to fund, but they are not getting the cash they need to provide good, nutritious food to increasingly desperate people like the man I met in Malawi.
As food prices soar worldwide, poor families are already substituting less nutritious foods for higher-priced meat, fish, eggs and vegetables. For people who are already sick this can have drastic health consequences. The poorest families are being forced to choose between food and medicine for loved ones.
If we do not do a better job of helping poor HIV-affected families today, what chance will the next generation have for health and prosperity? It is time to change the way we help. Drugs alone are not a solution for Aids or TB. What doctor would admit patients to a hospital, give them the most advanced medications – and then leave them to starve
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August 14, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I must admit that I am a little confused by this article. I have always believed that implicit in the efforts of every agency is to ensure that the people of third world countries have either the food they need or the means to supply it. I have never thought that organizations are only offering medical supplies and treatment. Am I misreading the article?
August 14, 2008 at 1:52 pm
It’s a disturbing piece … I wish I qualified as an expert to interpret it.
Aid is such a huge undertaking, I’m not sure if there is single expert. So it’s nice to hear differing viewpoints, however painful.
I’ve been reading an interesting book called “Africa Doesn’t Matter: How the West Has Failed the Poorest Continent and What We Can Do About It.”
It’s a dense read, but the thing recently that struck me is the notion that aid is a huge, amorphous undertaking, and one of its biggest challenges is determining the “right aid” — i.e., the specific needs of a given area or group.
So _if_ there’s an adjustment to be made, I hope articles like this (which give one such a sad, sinking feeling to read) will end up pointing the way to helpful adjustments in the way we deliver help.
But, I also think it’s important to stress that 99% of are doing the very best we can. All we can do is modify and improve as we go.
August 15, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Well, I am not an “expert” with a Masters Degree in Economic but I do have some first hand experience which can highlight what this article is talking about.
The reason that the website I helped to establish and presently volunteer for (www.mpwn-uganda.org) got started is that the women of the MPWN, who all are on their ARV’s through PEPFAR and other programs, asked for a vehicle through which they could sell their traditional African craft items to help them to provide a sustainable living for their families.
These are women, most of them widowed or single parents, who are living in dire poverty.In Uganda. Like many other places, people are still discriminated against in their societies when their HIV+ status is known and so these women can not normally find employment in their communities.
The thought of my advocacy through ONE for their right to stay alive on ARV’s through PEPFAR and then for them not to be able to support their families (feed their children, pay the school fees to send them to school, etc) was something as a principled person that I could not live with.
So, at their request, we set up the website so that Agnes Nyamayarwo and the HIV+ women that she works with can try to live in economic dignity.
We always welcome visitors to the MPWN website and especially any purchases that people care to make there as the women are getting ready to send their children back to school. The unfortunate fact is that SOME OF THEIR CHILDREN WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ATTEND SCHOOL THIS FALL because their mothers will not be able to afford to send all their children to school !
Thanks to DATA’s leadership’s, there was language in the latest PEPFAR bill which was just recently passed by Congress which will set aside several million dollars for “seed projects” to help people, such as the MPWN, to start self-sufficiency programs like small-scale farming, small businesses and computer training to start helping the people that are being kept alive on ARV’s not to suffer in dire poverty.
Hopefully people can now begin to see another reason why I was so fervent in my support of PEPFAR’s re-authorization. Hope this helps.
ALWAYS ONE in the Spirit, debbie
http://www.mpwn-uganda.org