PanAfrica: HIV/AIDS And the Children
July 31, 2006
East African Business Week (Kampala)
There are many strategies used in responding to the impact of HIV/AIDS on adults and children and I am going to consider a few. For our purposes, I will consider the concerns that have been inscribed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
First on the list is survival of children. For children who are living with HIV, it is important to ensure that they are protected diligently from any form of opportunistic infections such as malaria, cold, intestinal diseases and pneumonia among others.
Children especially in their infancy cannot be expected to understand what it means to keep clean, warm or to observe rules of hygiene unless adults around them supervise them. It is important to note here that, even children who may not be HIV positive face similar risks in their infancy and need to be protected from infection of any kind.
As caretakers of children, we need to monitor their health status regularly, especially if they are living with HIV. For the children who are HIV positive, we should ensure that they are not struggling against an unknown opportunistic infection quietly as we take care of them.
Medical check up would always ensure this.
If we can afford at some stage, we should check their CD4 count and viral load to see whether they need to be put on some form of anti-retroviral drugs. The drugs for children are still limited, but a lot of research is going on to try and deal with this imbalance.
Related to health is nutrition. There is currently a lot of work being done in the region on nutrition especially in relation to our traditional foods, which are affordable and available.
Many of the regular vegetables we get even in the poorest homes are not only nutritious, but may also be medicinal. Adults need to deliberately give children the first priority in feeding, and healthy feeding at that.
We also have to improve our knowledge of the kinds of easily available and affordable nutritional foods we have among us. If in any culture, the children feed after adults, this must be reversed; if they are given mainly starchy and watery food, this should change.
The aim should always be to have quality before quantity. Past assessments in certain parts of this East African region have shown that because of cultural feeding practices, even in the midst of plenty of food, some children have ended up becoming malnourished, often reflected in a high number of children being underweight (weight for age), wasted (weight for height) or stunted (height for age). Stunting is usually considered chronic malnutrition.
In this region according to UNICEF statistics, the percentage of moderate to severe stunting in infants (under-fives) between 1996 and 2004 in a number of countries are as follows: Burundi, 57%; DR Congo, 38%; Djibouti, 26%; Eritrea, 38%; Ethiopia, 52%; Kenya, 30%; Rwanda, 41%; Somalia, 23%; Tanzania, 38%; and Uganda, 39%. Many of the countries that do not have figures for malnourished children are found in Europe, North America and Australia. There also seems to be a close link between instability, poverty and malnutrition. For example, 54% of under-five children in Afghanistan between the years 1996 and 2004 were stunted, while the figure for Iraq was 22% for the same period compared to 15% for neighbouring Iran.
It is therefore not a big surprise that a big part of Sub-Saharan Africa has children facing chronic malnutrition.
We have to however take this with "a pinch of salt" because even in the countries that have had stability for years, we still see high levels of stunting; Kenya and Tanzania come to mind when we consider this contradiction.
If one compared the economies of Somalia and Kenya for example, it would be quite unfair to say that they are in anyway close. Probably the answer is not in whether one is poor or rich, highly developed or just developing, but rather in what kind of feeding practices we have with respect to our infants.
Source: ProNut- HIV eForum
East African Business Week (Kampala)
There are many strategies used in responding to the impact of HIV/AIDS on adults and children and I am going to consider a few. For our purposes, I will consider the concerns that have been inscribed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
First on the list is survival of children. For children who are living with HIV, it is important to ensure that they are protected diligently from any form of opportunistic infections such as malaria, cold, intestinal diseases and pneumonia among others.
Children especially in their infancy cannot be expected to understand what it means to keep clean, warm or to observe rules of hygiene unless adults around them supervise them. It is important to note here that, even children who may not be HIV positive face similar risks in their infancy and need to be protected from infection of any kind.
As caretakers of children, we need to monitor their health status regularly, especially if they are living with HIV. For the children who are HIV positive, we should ensure that they are not struggling against an unknown opportunistic infection quietly as we take care of them.
Medical check up would always ensure this.
If we can afford at some stage, we should check their CD4 count and viral load to see whether they need to be put on some form of anti-retroviral drugs. The drugs for children are still limited, but a lot of research is going on to try and deal with this imbalance.
Related to health is nutrition. There is currently a lot of work being done in the region on nutrition especially in relation to our traditional foods, which are affordable and available.
Many of the regular vegetables we get even in the poorest homes are not only nutritious, but may also be medicinal. Adults need to deliberately give children the first priority in feeding, and healthy feeding at that.
We also have to improve our knowledge of the kinds of easily available and affordable nutritional foods we have among us. If in any culture, the children feed after adults, this must be reversed; if they are given mainly starchy and watery food, this should change.
The aim should always be to have quality before quantity. Past assessments in certain parts of this East African region have shown that because of cultural feeding practices, even in the midst of plenty of food, some children have ended up becoming malnourished, often reflected in a high number of children being underweight (weight for age), wasted (weight for height) or stunted (height for age). Stunting is usually considered chronic malnutrition.
In this region according to UNICEF statistics, the percentage of moderate to severe stunting in infants (under-fives) between 1996 and 2004 in a number of countries are as follows: Burundi, 57%; DR Congo, 38%; Djibouti, 26%; Eritrea, 38%; Ethiopia, 52%; Kenya, 30%; Rwanda, 41%; Somalia, 23%; Tanzania, 38%; and Uganda, 39%. Many of the countries that do not have figures for malnourished children are found in Europe, North America and Australia. There also seems to be a close link between instability, poverty and malnutrition. For example, 54% of under-five children in Afghanistan between the years 1996 and 2004 were stunted, while the figure for Iraq was 22% for the same period compared to 15% for neighbouring Iran.
It is therefore not a big surprise that a big part of Sub-Saharan Africa has children facing chronic malnutrition.
We have to however take this with "a pinch of salt" because even in the countries that have had stability for years, we still see high levels of stunting; Kenya and Tanzania come to mind when we consider this contradiction.
If one compared the economies of Somalia and Kenya for example, it would be quite unfair to say that they are in anyway close. Probably the answer is not in whether one is poor or rich, highly developed or just developing, but rather in what kind of feeding practices we have with respect to our infants.
Source: ProNut- HIV eForum
posted by AIDS-Care-Watch at 2:32 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home