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

In this session “food security constraints” refers to limitations in food availabilityand access that impede proper nutritional care and support. Utilization is also afundamental component of food security, but because food utilization is inherent innutritional care and support (i.e., nutritional care and support itself addresses foodutilization), the “external” food security constraints in this session refer only to foodaccess and food availability. Certain aspects of food utilization, such as poor qualitywater supplies, can also externally constrain nutritional care and support.Reduced labor availability of both HIV-infected people and caregivers in thehousehold, sale of productive assets such as a goat or a dairy cow to pay for healthcare or basic necessities, and external non-HIV/AIDS-related factors such as weatheror conflict can all decrease household and community food production. This reducedavailability of food constrains the capacity for nutritional care and support bylimiting the quantity and variety of food available for consumption.Within households, HIV/AIDS often leads to loss of income, sale of assets, anddepletion of savings and food reserves to pay for health care, compensate for lostlabor, and maintain expenditure levels on basic needs. These responses can alldiminish household access to food, and nutritional care and support depends on thecapacity to access a variety of nutritious foods continuously.Practitioners who provide nutritional care and support guidance andrecommendations should recognize and identify the specific food securityconstraints that may keep a household or individual from accessing nutritional careand support. Based on this recognition, practitioners can work with clients andcaregivers to identify dietary recommendations that are feasible within theirconstraints, as well as actions and services that can help mitigate the foodinsecurity.Factors affecting food security (slide 11)Factors that negatively affect a household’s or individual’s food availability or foodaccess can be divided into four categories:• Individual-level constraints such as food habits, reduced capacity to eatbecause of infection symptoms, level of knowledge of the benefits of properfeeding, and psychosocial factors such as depression71