HIV/Aids hitting Africa's belly

2003-07-01 12:32

Geneva - The Aids epidemic in Africa is hitting farm output and threatening millions with poverty and hunger, United Nations agencies said on Monday.

"The majority of African countries worst-hit by HIV/Aids are also those heavily reliant on agriculture," said Peter Piot, executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids.

"For many rural households in these countries, Aids has turned what used to be a food shortage into a food crisis."

The agency issued a joint report on the crisis with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which said Aids had killed seven million agricultural workers since 1985 in the 25 worst-hit African countries.

The epidemic could kill 16 million more by 2020, it warned.

"Hunger and poverty, aggravated by HIV/Aids, create a vicious spiral," said Jacques Diouf, the director general of FAO.

"Where farmers and their families fall sick, they cultivate less land and shift to less labour-intensive and less nutritious crops; agricultural productivity decreases and hunger and malnutrition are on the rise.

30 million live in sub-Saharan Africa

"Many children are losing their parents before learning how to farm, to prepare food and to fend for themselves.

"Severe malnutrition among orphans is already reported in the worst affected areas."

The two UN agencies estimate that about 30 million of the 42 million people with HIV/Aids live in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of them in rural areas.

Last year, five million more people were infected with the virus, most of them living in low-income, food-deficit countries.

In most of southern Africa, up to 80% of the population depends on small-scale agriculture for food and livelihood.

Many officials are among the victims

The disease is having a dramatic impact on African farming not only because of the large numbers of agricultural workers affected, but also because agronomists and many government officials are among the victims.

According to FAO estimates, many countries are likely to see a quarter of their farmers affected by HIV/Aids.

"We will see more and more what we have seen recently in southern Africa: a vicious circle of poverty, hunger and Aids, working in a synergistic way and exacerbating each other," said Piot.

"It is absolutely important that ministries of agriculture must tackle Aids as one of their core priorities," Piot said.

But, for the ministries concerned, this gets harder as key staff succumb to the epidemic, he added.

/rm

- AFP