[pronut-hiv] Nutrition and HIV Prevention?

["Herbert Dola" <hdola@kit.handicap-international.or.ke>]

 Nutrition prevention, treatment or both? (3)

Good Morning Motoky,
You have posed a very good question about the significance of nutrition in
HIV prevention.  I shall attempt to answer your question in two ways, if you
like.  Firstly, nutrition is a key aspect in Public Health especially for
the children under 5 and mothers in child-bearing ages, not forgetting
humanity in general.  Good nutrition helps ward off the severity of some
infections in patients (regardless of whether they have HIV or not).  Good
nutrition also plays a crucial role in building up the resistance to
diseases and infections, especially those of viral origin.  Good nutrition
is also essential, as you know, to accelerated healing process or recovery
of a patient.  So in that regards for other infections, other than HIV,
nutrition has a role.
Secondly, prevention of HIV depends on the measures taken in preventing
contact of your body fluid (within the body) with any HIV contaminated
material.  That is to say, ensuring that you take precautions when handling
any suspected material from getting into your body.  You can only prevent
HIV by:
-    Practising safe sex/inclusive of abstinence etc.
-    Screening of blood before allowing transfusion
-    Safe disposal of all sharps and any surgical material
-    Single use of needles and syringes/surgical instruments etc.
Ando so on. I do not believe that I can prevent HIV infection by just having
good nutrition and not taking precautions.  That may not be prudent.  In the
same light, I do not believe that because one does not have good nutrition
then the person is likely to get HIV infection.  Still, is good you have
pose this question which can stimulate a lot of thinking and make us
re-examine some of the things we take fore granted.  Perhaps there is a link
between nutrition and prevention.  The above explanation is according to my
understanding and I stand to be corrected.
Thanks for now.

Herbert Dola
Handicap International,
Kenya

*****************************************************************************************
----- Original Message -----
From: "Motoky Hayakawa" <mhayakaw@smtp.aed.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 9:10 PM
Subject: [pronut-hiv] Nutrition and HIV Prevention?


> Nutrition prevention, treatment or both? (1)
>
> What can we say about nutrition and HIV prevention? Does nutrition have
anything to do with HIV prevention as opposed to treatment? Anyone?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Motoky

--
ProNut-HIV is a collaboration between SATELLIFE and the Academy for
Educational Development (AED).

To send a message to ProNut-HIV, write to: pronut-hiv@healthnet.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe, write to: majordomo@healthnet.org
in the body of the message type: subscribe pronut-hiv OR unsubscribe
pronut-hiv
To contact a person, send a message to: pronut-hiv-help@healthnet.org
Information and archives: http://www.pronutrition.org