WUNRN
Please see TWO parts of this WUNRN
release.
UNIFEM - HIV/AIDS:
A Gender Equality and Human Rights Issue
Across the world, HIV/AIDS threatens the lives and rights of individuals, severely restricting their hope for development. Countries with the highest HIV-prevalence rates face consequences that include the loss of people able to run the government, businesses and vital public services. This sets the stage for both individual suffering and social and economic decline. Tragically, social stigmas related to HIV/AIDS still hinder efforts to stem the disease in all regions of the world. For women, the picture is made more complex by gender inequality, poverty and blatant violations of women’s rights — without tackling these issues, overall efforts to address the epidemic will be futile.
Almost half the HIV-positive people in the world are now women, but in Africa, where the epidemic has stretched the furthest, young women are three times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men. Gender inequality leaves women with less control than men over their bodies and their lives. They have less information about how to prevent HIV, and fewer resources to take preventative measures. They face barriers to the negotiation of safe sex that include economic dependency and violence. In some cases, poverty forces women into the sex trade. And regardless of whether they themselves are HIV positive or sick with AIDS, women assume the burden of home-based care for others who are sick or dying. While many have shown great fortitude and courage in these situations, they lose time and energy that might be spent on earning a livelihood or caring for their own illness, and risk sinking into an ever-deepening degree of poverty.
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New UN Report Spotlights Critical Link Between Hunger,
Health and HIV/AIDS
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28 November 2007 – In a major report released today ahead of World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has called for paying greater attention to the link between hunger and health, pointing out that food is often cited as the greatest need by people living with HIV/AIDS.
WFP’s World Hunger Series 2007 – Hunger and Health explores the relationships between hunger and poor health with particular reference to HIV/AIDS. It notes that while countries invest billions into anti-retroviral treatment (ART) and other medicines to address the pandemic, they overlook the fact that people receiving life-saving drugs often lack food and clean water.
The agency points out that as with any drug, anti-retrovirals are more effective when people are adequately nourished, and food support can help ensure that people who lack food benefit fully from their treatment.
“It is irresponsible to ignore the issue of hunger and malnutrition particularly in the battle against AIDS,” said WFP Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu. “Why should we write off the benefits of medical interventions simply because people are too undernourished to absorb and benefit from the drugs they desperately need?”
Studies show that people with HIV have special nutritional needs, the agency says, noting that even when a person consumes enough food, if they lack certain vitamins and minerals, their immune system is compromised, making them vulnerable to infections.
“Food is often cited by people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS as their greatest and most important need,” said Elizabeth Mataka, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa.
Speaking at a seminar in Rome, at which the report was presented, she added that “nutrition interventions for HIV programmes are often overlooked in the international HIV policy debate and they remain critically under-funded.”
In a related study, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) predicts that 900,000 people going onto ART in 2008 will require food assistance. It is estimated that the average cost of providing food support to a patient is $0.66 per day – less than 2 per cent of the current cost of drug programmes.
WFP, one of the first organizations to provide food assistance alongside ART in poor areas, now supports ART programmes in 16 countries in Africa, benefiting over 182,000 people. With active HIV/AIDS interventions in 50 countries worldwide, the agency is providing food assistance in 21 of 25 nations with the highest HIV prevalence rates.
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