Hunger a Big Enemy in War on AIDS
13th Nov 2006, 18:11 GMT
AIDS made Marie Lourdes Israel so sick she could barely move her bowed, stick-thin body. The medicine almost killed her. Her plight wasn't due to a problem with the drug, but with something more basic: She had no food, and taking the AIDS cocktail on an empty stomach caused severe stomach aches, dizziness and nausea. "Sometimes I would eat once a day, sometimes not at all because I couldn't find anything," said Israel, 51, who lost her meager earnings as a schoolteacher after falling ill to the virus that kills 15,000 Haitians each year. Starvation and malnutrition are fast becoming the twin perils of the AIDS fight, and doctors and health experts say millions of infected people in the developing world are rapidly approaching a tipping point where food will replace drugs as the biggest need. The U.N. World Food Program has launched nutrition programs in Haiti and 50 other countries with the worst HIV rates, providing monthly food supplements for patients and their families. Without adequate nutrition, AIDS sufferers cannot absorb the drugs needed to slow the virus. As in Israel's case, side effects from taking the pills without food can lead patients to neglect treatment. "When you have the meds and don't have the food ... then the bigger problem becomes food security," said Harvard University professor Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, a pioneering medical mission in Haiti's highlands that gives free treatment to thousands. Worldwide, an estimated 3.8 million people with AIDS needed food support this year, possibly rising to 6.4 million by 2008, according to the World Food Program. Hungry people are six times more likely to die when going on AIDS medication than those with good nutrition, according to a study in the British journal HIV Medicine. Robin Jackson, chief of the World Food Program's HIV/AIDS service in Rome, said...
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