[pronut-hiv] Topic 1: Promising Approaches in Nutrition -HIV Integration

["Dr. Robert Mwadime" <rmwadime@rcqhc.org>]

Now let's discuss our experience and feelings, suggestions etc. on integration of (or is it "link"?) nutrition and HIV interventions. To help facilitate the process of integration, a number of countries have developed "guidelines on nutrition and HIV/AIDS" (some countries were shy so they called it nutrition and "chronic diseases").  

I propose that we start by giving our experiences on the (development and) use of guidelines on nutrition and HIV/AIDS. Are they used in the integration process? Are there concerns on the guidelines we have? What are the promising issues in use of national/international guidelines on nutrition and HIV?

Please let us keep to discussions on use of guidelines (or policies) and the experiences we have. 

We shall move to other integration issues soon.
  

Robert Mwadime (Ph.D, MPH)
Regional Senior Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Advisor
Academy for Education Development (AED)
Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) Project
c/o Regional Centre for Quality of Health Care,
P. O. Box 29140 Kampala, Uganda
Tel: +256-772-517438, 752-587635, 414-530888
www.fantaproject/www.aed.org

NB/

We look at integration from two main lenses. 
One, that nutrition services are provided as part of care and treatment interventions for PLHIV. Initially this was not heard off and many clinicians (including funders of programs) were resistant to this. Whenever they heard of nutrition, man, they interpreted it to imply "food assistance for the food insecure". And when nutritionists sat on the same table with HIV/AIDS experts they had little to share, other than the 4/6 food groups and cookery demonstrations. We have come from far as relates this definition. 

The second lens is that of protection of means of livelihood/production (or restoration of resource assets) that are the means of food security for the household. We have had to improvise new (or old??) production techniques (and social networks) and sometimes provide food assistance to reach households affected (or infected) by HIV in order to mitigate against the effects/impact of the disease. A lot of resources have been invested in this definition but we have a long way to go still.