Food Security

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Food Security Is Vital for People Living with HIV

By, Clementine Mumba, The Correspondent, June 12, 2007

Many people living with HIV (PLHIV) are too poor to take care of their health properly. Even among those people with access to free antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, many cannot afford to maintain the balanced diet they need to compliment the drugs.

Supporting these people would require a well thought out policy, promoting the self-sufficiency of people living with disease.

In 2004, an organization that I belong to called the Network of ARV Users lodged a Project Proposal with the Zambia National AIDS Network (ZNAN) for a chicken-rearing programme that would generate income for people living with HIV. The idea was well articulated and looked good on paper so the project was approved by ZNAN and was launched in January 2005.

We bought our first batch of chickens from the Zambia Beef Company and sold them on credit for a month. We managed to collect some money and make a small profit. We did the same with the second batch but unfortunately our system started to fail, as most of our members could not resist the temptation of cooking and eating the chickens we were meant to sell.

They thought that by that time we should already have been making enough money to provide them with the soft loans they needed to improve their diets.

We hoped that after five to 12 months, we would make enough profits to reverse the situation. We wanted to have a revolving fund that would allow members who needed financial help to borrow money at low interest rates.

In the meantime, our members were starving. With no food at home for themselves or their families, the chickens ended up in their cooking pots as rations. Chicken, a useful source of protein, is considered a delicacy in many Zambian homes. Most of our members rarely received protein-rich food and the chicken became a supplement for their diets.

The cash raised from our sales could not be deposited into our account because it was given out as soft loans to some members who failed to pay it back. None of the members was harassed over their inability to pay back the money because most had no formal employment and were considered vulnerable.

Many of the members who did have jobs were also unable to pay the money back because their salaries were too low.

As I write, ZNAN is still monitoring the Network of ARV Users as a result of its failure to account for the funds raised from the income generating project. Some of our members, who have now passed away, were not able to account for the money they were responsible for.
All these problems resulted from the fact that our members living with HIV/AIDS did not have enough to eat.

Taking drugs on an empty stomach can be dangerous, especially in the case of ARVs, which are very strong. People receiving ARV treatment are advised to maintain a balanced diet but for many this is impossible. Most do not even own houses and are renting rooms in compounds without the space for a vegetable garden.

The government's moves to ensure that people living with HIV start taking ARVs are good but more needs to be done to secure food rations for those people receiving treatment who suffer from poor nutrition.

Doctor Canisius Banda, a member of our group and a government official, was quoted in an article in Zambia's Post newspaper in May as saying, "It is not the consumption of drugs that we must emphasize. Yes, drugs or pills have their critical role in prolonging or saving lives. Nonetheless, it is not pills that we rely on or must do for survival. It is food. Food is the fuel of life. Food keeps disease away, pills treat it."

Food security is vital to the future of Zambians living with HIV. As long as the government fails to address this, income generating activities aimed at these people will fail. I appeal to the Zambian government to come up with a policy for the provision of food rations to people on ARV treatment.

Clementine Mumba is a Key Correspondent in Zambia, and can be contacted at: info@thecorrespondent.org , website: www.TheCorrespondent.org