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Cooperatives Help Fight HIV/AIDS

U.S. cooperative development organizations (CDOs) are working to help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and mitigate its effects on individuals and communities, especially in East and Southern Africa. While the fight against HIV/AIDS is principally a health issue, social and economic programs are critical in mobilizing communities to make effective prevention, medical interventions and care possible and to deal with the consequences of the victims or those living with HIV/AIDS including large numbers of AIDS orphans.

Most of those living with HIV/AIDS are in food deficient countries of East Africa, especially rural areas. Nutrition is one of the most immediate needs of an HIV/AIDS infected person to extend life and is critical to any anti-retroviral drug treatment or MTCT program. You can and should treat the Mother and Child, but they both require additional nutrition to absorb the drugs. Poor nutrition makes HIV-positive individuals more prone to the other killer diseases such as TB and Malaria. Also, food assistance is an additional resource that can be used for dealing with HIV/AIDS.

Community mobilization is an effective tool to combat HIV/AIDS. So far, USAID funds have been narrowly targeted to prevention and treatment, which are absolutely critical, but little funding is available to strengthen local NGOs and community groups (including agricultural associations and coops) to mobilize and respond to the crisis. Given the magnitude of the crisis, there needs to be more room or flexibility in the interpretation of HIV/AIDS legislation to support the community groups and churches that are on the frontlines to educate and prevent those not yet infected HIV/AIDS, to advise those who may be and to counsel and treat those who are infected.

Community-based health service committees, that directly involve community members in local health decisions and rely on peer-to-peer prevention strategies have demonstrated their effectiveness in improving maternal and child health, reducing incidence of malaria, improving understanding of HIV/AIDS, and directly engaging community members in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment strategies at the local level.

Economic and Social Impacts of HIV/AIDS

The vast majority of those infected with HIV/AIDS live in the developing world, especially Africa. This crisis is impacting demography, the economy, behavior, society, and culture. This crisis is impeding the development progress because HIV/AIDS strikes men and women in their most productive years which has catastrophic economic and social ramifications. HIV/AIDS is having the following impacts:

• Governments are affected through rising expenditures on health care, increases in budgets for dealing with orphans, pervasive poverty and loss of human resources caused by rising adult mortality
• Declines in life expectancy and population growth due to increases in mortality and a reduction in fertility.
• Decline in output and GNP due to a reduction in the quality and quantity of the labor supply
• Volume and use of savings goes down, which effects the economy, less investment, less productive employment, lower incomes, slower level of GNP growth and a lower level of GNP
• Increase in health and social expenditures, especially for families
• Declines in agricultural production and food security
• Increased political instability and violence

To view the impacts, click here.

What Can Cooperatives Do?

Cooperatives offer an integrated approach to mobilize communities for the prevention, mitigation and care of those affected by HIV/AIDS. Cooperatives can provide the following services:

• Support to orphans and vulnerable children affected by AIDS
• Behavior change and life skills education
• Provide prevention information and promote and distribute condoms
• Train community health workers, train youth peer educators to provide information on STD and HIV/AIDS risk reduction and prevention as well as voluntary testing and counseling
• A mix of supportive projects aimed at increasing a beneficiary's livelihood
• Provide food and training for street children and orphans
• School feeding with special take home rations for families caring for orphans
• Food for training programs which promote income-generating activities and are linked to small-scale credit facilities for women and older orphans
• Food for training and food-for-work to support farmers through animal traction schemes and the provision of seeds and agricultural tools
• Food for work to support increased agricultural production through home gardening to improve diet diversification and increased intake of micro-nutrients
• Food for work and food for training to support the introduction of small scale, low labor livestock activities.
• Provide food for women living with HIV/AIDS and their children in order to prolong the life of the mother while ensuring the nutrition of her children
• Support the training of HIV/AIDS home-based care workers in nutrition counseling
• Provide nutritional support to tuberculosis patients to protect their food security and as an incentive to complete their full treatment protocol
• Home-based care for individuals and families living with HIV/AIDS

The following are programs that CDOs are currently implementing to help with HIV/AIDS prevention, mitigation, and care:

NTCA, Anglican Church Launch Project to Combat HIV/AIDS and Poverty in Rural South Africa

With support from the Ford Foundation, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) and the Anglican Diocese of St. John's in South Africa have launched a two-year project in the Eastern Cape to use information and communication technologies (ICTs) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic and improve the impoverished rural area's local food supply. Click here to read more about the project…

CHF International Creating African Development Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS in South Africa

The African Development Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS is an initiative that seeks to provide a vehicle for US-based corporations, foundations and other concerned institutions (U.S. contributors), to make a tangible social investment in the fight against HIV/AIDS, with an initial focus on South Africa. The Alliance is comprised of three main partners with support from USAID - CHF International, @theCentre, and the American Public Health Association. The goal of the African Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS is to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic by building US/African financial and political support around community-endorsed holistic campaigns that combat and stem the tide of HIV/AIDS in Sub Saharan Africa through specific project initiatives which directly link to HIV/AIDS.

Credit Unions in Kenya Respond to HIV/AIDS

In April 2002, WOCCU and the Canadian Cooperative Association (CCA) sent a two- person team to Kenya to work in consort with WOCCU Kenya local project staff to conduct an initial investigation exploring how credit unions and their members may be negatively affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic; how credit unions can become proactive participants in a multi-sectoral response to HIV/AIDS; and what linkages or alliances could be forged with non-financial service organizations such as health service providers in order for credit unions to better serve their members. WOCCU is developing a strategy to harness support for credit union and HIV/AIDS initiatives in Africa in the immediate future, and potentially in other rising infection areas such as South Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe in the longer term. To learn more, go here: http://www.woccu.org/pubs/cu_world/article.php?article_id=183. To read the research project called The Unpaved Road Ahead: HIV/AIDS & Microfinance, An Exploration of Kenyan Credit Unions (SACCOs), by Anna Cora Evans and Geza Radu, click here.

ACDI/VOCA in Africa

ACDI/VOCA is working with associations and cooperatives in Africa on HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, feeding programs, training, and income generation for youth. Projects are currently in Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda. Click here to read more about the projects…

NCBA in Kenya

NCBA is one of the implementers of the AMKENI project, which is building an extensive community-based network of local health care decision-makers, field coordinators, and volunteer educators who will work to improve the knowledge and decision-making ability of village women.

Land O'Lakes: Nutrition and HIV/AIDS

Land O'Lakes is working worldwide to provide awareness and prevention and to mobilize the private sector in South Africa for a nutritional response. Land O'Lakes is actively engaged in the area of research of human nutrition, food fortification and the role this can play in HIV/AIDS afflicted regions, specifically Africa. In addition, Land O'Lakes carries out school feeding programs for communities impacted by HIV/AIDS, conducts prevention training in dairy cooperatives in Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and other countries.

In its Zambia project, education and promotion campaigns emphasize the nutritional importance of milk consumption, targeting a broad audience as well as outreach to youth and people with HIV/AIDS, especially mothers and infants. In its Honduras project, dairy campaign awareness messages will include HIV/AIDS prevention and the important immune enhancing role dairy products play in maintaining health.
To read more from Land O'Lakes about the link between nutrition and HIV/AIDS, click here.

For excerpts from key HIV/AIDS documents, to learn more about HIV/AIDS, its impacts, prevention, and the nutritional response, click here.