Put food on the table at UN special session on HIV and AIDS

25 May 2006

Hunger and the lack of nutritious food make some drugs less effective, increase the risk of infection and ultimately shorten lives.

CARE is calling on governments to make the simple, but crucial, connection between poor people earning money to buy food and preventing and treating HIV and AIDS.

As state parties meet at the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in New York next week, CARE demands that HIV-affected people’s need for food is put at the heart of future policy making.

Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of CARE International UK, said: “Promises of ‘universal access’ to prevention, care, treatment and support risk becoming meaningless unless put in the context of improved healthcare and nutrition.

“In order for prevention, treatment, care and support to work, people must have access to nutritious food. In far too many places around the world, they do not. HIV affects the whole person and every aspect of their lives. Of course, access to drugs is crucial – but we need to look at all other aspects of people’s lives, as well as health.”

Food plays a vital role in treatment and support for those living with or affected by HIV and AIDS in the following ways:

Treatment:

• Anti-retroviral medicine is very strong and many pills must be taken on a full stomach if they are to work – difficult for those with no food
• A stronger, healthier body increases resistance to opportunistic infections – which are so dangerous for the poor, who have no health care

Support:

• HIV positive people need around 10-15 per cent more energy and 50-100 per cent more protein per day than those who are not infected. Poor nutrition speeds up the progress of the disease
• Healthy living delays the need for anti-retroviral treatment

Imaya Ephraim, CARE International UK’s HIV/AIDS advisor, said: “A woman who is desperately hungry is vulnerable to agreeing to have sex with someone and risk contracting HIV just for a single meal.

“Bringing the issues of food and universal access to HIV and AIDS care together not only means longer life for a person living with HIV, but it also has important benefits for the community as the HIV positive person is able to continue working, caring for the family and leading an active and productive life.”

He continued: “This relationship is currently not dealt with in the discussion of universal access and is absolutely vital to tackling AIDS.”

For more information and for interviews, contact:
Sophie Kummer, UK communications officer, +44 207 934 9347, kummer@careinternational.org
Lynn Heinisch, UN press officer, +1 212 686 3110, Heinisch@care.org

Notes

State parties are meeting to review their progress on the 2001 United Nations Declaration of Commitment at the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS in New York from May 31 to June 2.

CARE will issue a report on Tuesday [May 30] on the role of civil society, showing that the people who are supposed to benefit from international commitments are not sufficiently engaged in the processes that affect them.

CARE delegates available for media interviews in New York:
• Dr. Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE USA, President of the International AIDS Society
• Millicent Obaso, HIV/AIDS Advisor, East and Central Africa
• Dr. Gioi Tran, HIV/AIDS Advisor, Asia
• Madhu Deshmukh, HIV/AIDS Director
• Michelle Munro, HIV/AIDS and Health Program Director

Photos, video footage and case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America are available.

About CARE International: CARE is a leading humanitarian organisation fighting global poverty. CARE works to prevent HIV and AIDS and to provide care, treatment and support to vulnerable communities impacted by the disease in 38 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.