28th January, 2009
Global Recession: A Death Sentence in Africa
With the “Worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” on the minds of the Obama Administration and of world leaders meeting at the World Economic Forum this week, will they remember those living with HIV in Africa, for whom the economic strife is a death sentence?
That’s the question Africa’s leading health development organisation, AMREF, asks political and business leaders meeting in Davos.
With only one in five Kenyans now able to afford two meals a day, the treatment that AMREF administers to some of the 2.5 million Kenyans living with HIV is ineffective for many of them. Many sufferers have even stopped taking the free anti-retroviral drugs AMREF provides in Africa’s poorest areas which have limited or no access to formal health care.
AMREF is providing food supplements to some sufferers in remote communities of rural Kenya where nursing provision is rare. It is also continuing to provide supplements in the vast neglected slum of the Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. But project staff in Kibera have already noticed a drop off in attendance of community members with HIV at AMREF community mobilisation meetings.
“Adequate nutrition is vital to the effectiveness of anti-retroviral drugs,” said Sakwa Mwangala, AMREF’s project manager in Kibera, one of Nairobi’s vast slums . “Without sufficient nutrition available, the effects of HIV and AIDS related illnesses in people living with HIV are exacerbated. The patients know this and stop taking their medication or weaken.”
Following one of the toughest droughts in the region, food shortages have spread across East Africa, affecting people not only in Ethiopia and Uganda, but now also the economic stronghold of Kenya. Food is even short in the African Rift Valley – the traditional breadbasket grain-producing region of Kenya.
One in every three people in Kenya is expected to experience dire shortages of food, according to the Kibaki Government, when it appealed for US$500 million of emergency aid on Friday 16 January. Food prices in Kenya have risen nearly fivefold over the past 12 months.
“No matter how severe, the global recession will affect Africa in ways the rest of the world can only imagine”, said AMREF Director General Michael Smalley.
“The huge HIV problem and lack of adequate formal health care are a death sentence when coupled with food scarcity and economic hardships.
“The amount required to provide health care in Africa is minuscule compared with the trillions which governments in the developed world found to prop up banking systems last year. Government and business leaders must remember Africa during these tough times and invest in Africa’s health so that the economic downturn does not mean human tragedy for millions.”