Kenya womens' network focuses on local food sources to support people living with HIV/AIDS
Nutrition is an important component in the fight against HIV and AIDS, especially where malnutrition and food insecurity are common. Adequate consumption of the right kinds and amounts of foods improves fitness and quality of life of people with HIV/AIDS and can prolong the asymptomatic period of relative health. Yet food is often overlooked in the standard treatment, care and support of HIV/AIDS.
The Kenya Network of Women with AIDS (KENWA) is a community-based organization founded in 1993 by five HIV-infected women who had been rejected by their families, with the goal of improving quality of life for people living with HIV and AIDS especially women and their children. 99% of KENWA’s members live in the slums. Through feeding programs in eight drop-in centres in rural and urban areas, KENWA is currently feeding 1,700 Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs), 5,000 women and 251 men living with HIV and AIDS.
To give its members the best nutrition within their program resources, KENWA has developed a highly enriched porridge formula of groundnuts, soya beans, sorghum and millet that are ground into a fine powder. The ingredients in the porridge contain vitamins, starch, fat and protein that are rich in amino acid and help to repair body tissues and purify the blood.
KENWA’s Centre Co-ordinators, in conjunction with community health workers, wake up at the crack of dawn to prepare the porridge that is fed to OVCs before they go to school. All the ingredients are added together because the OVCs and their bedridden parents cannot afford a balanced diet, leave alone a single meal per day. The porridge also helps those who cannot chew or swallow solid food, and those who have a poor appetite due to stress and opportunistic infections.
According to KENWA, any nutrition-based initiative for people who live in resource-constrained settings should be based on two things; what is available and what is affordable. Sometimes people are not aware of resources around them. For example, during a workshop for nutrition workers who complained about lack of food for their clients, the nutritionist had the workers pick leaves from the cassava tree, which they thought were poisonous. She washed the leaves, cut them into small pieces and boiled them till they were soft and tender, then pounded some roasted groundnuts and used this to fry the cassava leaves. The result was a nutritious stew eaten with ugali, showing that sometimes, available foods are not available because of lack of knowledge.
This story is summarized from an article by Josaya Wasonga, KENWA’s Information, Education and Communications Co-ordinator, published in the August 2006 issue (no. 47) of Baobab, which is produced three times a year by the Arid Lands Information Network – Eastern Africa as a forum in which Community Development Workers (CDWs) can share ideas, information and experiences on development approaches. The August 2006 edition focused on success stories of community projects that have contributed significantly to improving livelihoods and overcoming cultural and socio-economic barriers. ALIN-EA was created in 1988 and has more than 1000 members in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. KENWA can be reached at P.O. Box 10001-00100, Nairobi, Kenya.
ALIN-Eastern Africa, P. O. Box 10098, 00100 G.P.O, Nairobi, KENYA. Email.
For more stories about children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, see:
Centre brings women together in African slum to care for AIDS orphans
African, Canadian grandmothers reach out to help AIDS orphans
Campaign to educate AIDS orphans in Uganda began with one child's courage
Canadians reach out to help the orphans of Lesotho attend school
Coping with the grief and loss of AIDS: memory projects bring hope to Africa
Fishmongering brings self-help to HIV-positive people in Homa Bay
Successful model sustains AIDS orphans by rebuilding villages sustainably
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