Abstract:
food insecurity limits capacity to meet the specific nutritional needs of HIV/AIDS affected people. HIV infection
itself undermines food security and nutrition by reducing work capacity and productivity and jeopardizing household
livelihoods. The HIV Nutrition Project’s (HNP) food intervention study funded by the GL-CRSP through USAID has the
improvement of household food security through an increased intake of animal source foods as one of the core objectives.
In addition to health and nutritional status assessment, the proxy measures being used by HNP to capture changes in a
household’s ability to access food over time include the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) with a range of
0-27, the Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) with a range of 0-12, and the Months of Adequate Household
Food Provisioning (MAHFP) score with a range of 0-12. Of the 104 HIV-infected drug naïve women enrolled in the
study thus far, 49% live on less than USD 1.00 per day and spend less than USD 5.00 per year for purchases of medicine.
Preliminary findings show that at baseline, their mean (SD) age, CD4 cell count, Hemoglobin (Hb), and Body Mass
Index (BMI) were 34.8 (7.0), 502 (212), 12.4 (1.6), and 22.4 (3.7), respectively. The HFIAS score (SD) of 7 (2.4)
and a 42.7% prevalence of severe food insecurity reflected household worry due to inadequate food, and the consumption
of fewer or small meals. The MAHFP score (SD) was 5.24 (2.7) with majority of the households having limited access to
food during the months of July (74%), August (83%), and September (72%). The HDDS (SD) of 6.10 (1.9) suggests
a prevalence of low food diversity in diets. With the exception of milk, which is mostly consumed in tea, there was very
minimal consumption of animal source foods. The scores for these proxy measures of household food insecurity indicate that
though the current CD4 counts and Body Mass Indices (BMI) of the study population are within the normal range, their
habitual diets are likely to be poor due to the high prevalence of food insecurity.
