World AIDS Day 2009
Imagine you have only enough money to pay for food or your anti-retroviral HIV medication.
If you chose the medication, your body weakens from lack of nutrition, and your immune system is compromised.
If you chose food, you do not have the necessary medicine to fight the HIV in your body. Your immune system is compromised.
The correlation between hunger and HIV infection is striking. In Sub Saharan Africa, where over 60% of HIV positive people live, access to food is unstable for a majority of people. When food is available often it is not nutritious and doesn’t provide protein or vitamins. Prolonged droughts due to climate change means a less dependable source of food. And rising global food prices means food is increasingly too expensive to buy.
Because of poverty, lack of access to food, and sporadic harvests many people have to choose between food and anti-retroviral medication. For those living with HIV, who actuall need 10% more calories to survive, this is a desperate situation. Not only does one need enough food to maintain a healthy immune system, but HIV medications must be taken with food in order to minimize side effects.
This reality is overwhelming. It reminds us of the interconnections between poverty, food security, health and justice. Just as in our own country access to health care and healthy food is too often available only to upper classes, on a global scale access to food and health is similarly available only for those who can afford it.
Yet, we should remember that fighting for an overhaul of our national food system will have international effects. If we can keep food out of our gas tanks, and change the way we eat, where we get our food, how it is grown, and who owns the patents to our seeds, we will help to change the global food paradigm.
So let’s keep fighting.
