[pronut-hiv] Response to Stacia and Tara/Possible 2006 Conference on Agriculture and HIV/AIDS

["Janet Feldman" <kaippg@earthlink.net>]

Dear Stacia, Tara, and All,

Hello and thanks to you both for writing about two essential components of a successful strategy to prevent and mitigate the effects of HIV/AIDS:  nutrition/agriculture (esp. using local foodstuffs) and traditional medicine, in combination with ARVs, nutrition, and other components of healthy living.

The recent IFRPI conference, and the Maputo conference two years ago on HIV/AIDS, food security, and agriculture in E. and S. Africa, came to the conclusion that nutrition/agriculture is one of the most important tools for mitigating HIV/AIDS, yet still very under-utilized. Hence the activities you describe are exciting and invaluable.

I wanted to mention now that discussions are underway by my own org (KAIPPG), CTA, and VETAID--and we hope a number of others will join us as partners, sponsors, and participants--for a follow-up to the above-named conferences (and others like KCAN), which will specifically focus on the types of "action-oriented", locally-centered, and agriculturally-based aspects of what you are doing. It would be very exciting to hear more about your activities in that context, and to learn more about the model Stacia mentions, including the tools and skills which orgs attending might bring back with them to their communities and constituents.

For anyone interested, please be in touch, and I will be doing outreach to some of you in any case. With all best wishes and big bravos, and yours in nutritious networking, Janet  (Feldman, KAIPPG International, kaippg@earthlink.net )


--------- Stacia wrote:
Thanks for sharing this Tara - I was hoping see a stronger food focus in your actions, I see that nutrition does fall under positive living. It feels like the action points are geared toward medicines when there is so much to be done before medicines are even needed (yes, and after too, nutrition is important in the whole care continuum!)

There are hundreds of foods in Africa that can provide free, readily accessible, year-round food and nutrition security at each of our finger tips. I hope that some of the action that takes place focuses on reviving these foods and bringing them into our modern world where they belong! We are doing this in Malawi and the ideas are catching on.

Right now I'm working through World Food Programme with over 100 organizations from Government, communities and non-governmental organizations to develop a model to help people learn about these resources. We hope to come up with tools and skills to share so that we can implement the ideas in each of our own lives and then share the ideas effectively with others.

We are meeting together over the next 5 months to test out the most promising methods. We should be finished with our work in October and have a model finished by November, if all goes according to African-time!

If you have any best practices to share with us, please let me know!

Stacia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stacia Nordin, RD
Nutrition Consultant
Specialist in Sustainable Food & Nutrition Security and HIV/AIDS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Post Dot Net X-124, Crossroads, Lilongwe, Malawi
Physical Location: Chitedze Trading Centre, Lilongwe, Malawi (Africa)
+265 1-707-213 (home)
+265 9-333-073 (home cell)
nordin@eomw.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~