Hunger, HIV/AIDS hit Africa with double punch
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
DAKAR, Mar 3 (Reuters): A persisting food crisis and rising HIV/AIDS infection rates in Africa form a deadly partnership that is destroying livelihoods and undermining economies in the world's poorest continent, UN experts said last Friday.
This combination could be accentuated by the global economic crisis, which may reduce donor aid for better nutrition and health care, pushing millions more Africans into a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, disease and death.
"The (rise in) food prices at the beginning of the year and now the economic crisis, this is enormous ... the urgency to act now is so much bigger," Martin Bloem, the UN World Food Programme (WFP)'s Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Policy chief, said.
He and WFP Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu said the double impact of increased malnutrition and diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were all the more devastating in Africa, where poverty and food insecurity were widespread and AIDS was the largest single cause of premature death.
"What is coming down the pipe in terms of the financial crisis cannot be underestimated," Sisulu said, speaking on the sidelines of an AIDS conference in Dakar, Senegal.
Poor rural and urban African families who were not getting enough nutrition in their diets, because of conflict disrupting their lives, natural disasters or high prices putting food beyond their budgets, were seeing their immune systems weaken.
This made them more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The deaths from disease of family bread-winners or members of collective workforces were draining the economic lifeblood from individual households and whole economies, Bloem said.
This combination could be accentuated by the global economic crisis, which may reduce donor aid for better nutrition and health care, pushing millions more Africans into a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, disease and death.
"The (rise in) food prices at the beginning of the year and now the economic crisis, this is enormous ... the urgency to act now is so much bigger," Martin Bloem, the UN World Food Programme (WFP)'s Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Policy chief, said.
He and WFP Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu said the double impact of increased malnutrition and diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were all the more devastating in Africa, where poverty and food insecurity were widespread and AIDS was the largest single cause of premature death.
"What is coming down the pipe in terms of the financial crisis cannot be underestimated," Sisulu said, speaking on the sidelines of an AIDS conference in Dakar, Senegal.
Poor rural and urban African families who were not getting enough nutrition in their diets, because of conflict disrupting their lives, natural disasters or high prices putting food beyond their budgets, were seeing their immune systems weaken.
This made them more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The deaths from disease of family bread-winners or members of collective workforces were draining the economic lifeblood from individual households and whole economies, Bloem said.