Nutrition and HIV/AIDS: A Training Manual - Linkages Project

Conclusion (slide 36)The capacity to implement effective nutritional care and support depends heavily onhousehold food security. Information about optimal nutritional practices is often notsufficient to enable people living with HIV/AIDS to improve their health andnutritional status. Providers of nutritional care and support need to assess clients’food security situations and underlying factors, identify feasible dietary optionswithin the food security constraints, and where possible help address the sources offood insecurity through referrals or linkages to programs and through improvedhousehold practices and strategies.The remaining sessions of this module focus on specific dimensions of nutritionalcare and support. Successful implementation of each of these dimensions isundermined by food insecurity. Each nutritional recommendation and interventionrequires consideration of specific food security constraints and options to addressthese constraints. Considering the food security issues laid out in this session willenable stronger practical application of each topic’s information andrecommendations, thereby enabling improved nutritional care and support forpeople living with HIV/AIDS.Notes1. The United Nations Subcommittee on Nutrition (UN ACC/SCN 1991) defines foodsecurity in the following way: “A household is food secure when it has access to thefood needed for a healthy life for all its members (adequate in terms of quality,quantity and culturally acceptable), and when it is not at undue risk of losing suchaccess.” The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) organizeshousehold food security into the concepts of acquirement and utilization (“FoodSecurity – A conceptual framework”).2. This system was developed by Development Alternatives, Inc., and InternationalDevelopment Enterprises through the 5-year, USAID-funded LEAD (Linkages for theEconomic Advancement of the Disadvantaged) project (Dratt 2002). Promisingpractices on multisectoral approaches to HIV/AIDS. Washington, DC: PVO-USAIDSteering Committee for Multisectoral Approaches to HIV/AIDS; Kadiyala, S, and SGillespie. 2003. Rethinking food aid to fight AIDS. Washington, DC: IFPRI).89