Stories about how WFP is assisting people with HIV and tuberculosis.
WFP's nutrition support programme for malnourished people living with HIV in the region of Bouaké, central Côte d'Ivoire, runs for six months. After this, the patient is normally expected to grow out of malnutrition and regain his or her ability to lead an active life. However, many patients are so poor and vulnerable that they cannot be discharged.
Last year, WFP introduced vouchers into its urban HIV/AIDS programme in Ethiopia on a pilot basis, in place of traditional food assistance. People benefiting from the project can redeem vouchers for locally produced food. It’s just one part of a programme that helps people living with HIV and AIDS to get back on their feet.
25 years ago Sister Valeria Amato moved from Sicily to Guinea-Bissau and has since dedicated her life to providing nutritional assistance to people living with HIV and tuberculosis.
Thanks to this initiative a group of Guatemala women living with HIV learn about their condition, to give emotional support to one another and to develop new skills that will allow them to earn a living and put food on the table for their families.
World AIDS Day on December 1 marks ten years since WFP began providing specialised nutritional assistance to people suffering from the HIV virus. Ensuring that patients get the right nutrition and don’t have to choose between treatment and food is critical to winning the fight against the disease.
For Khumbu Shiba, who has been HIV-positive for three years, WFP’s food and nutrition assistance has meant all the difference. Before, she was barely able to care for her family, and felt very weak. Now, she has regained her health and has even started her own business.
For many years, not having enough to eat meant that Agnes struggled to stay on her antiretroviral treatment. Thanks to food assistance from WFP, she can now take her medication more regularly, provide for her family and help others in her community.
Learning that she was HIV+ and that her husband had hidden the truth of his condition from her was a double shock for Florence, who lives in Liberia’s capital Monrovia. But with support from WFP, she has turned her life around and is hopeful about her family’s future.
Just how many people does WFP feed each year? How much does that cost and where does it get the money? Find the answers to these questions and more in this infographic about WFP—the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency.
With the help of WFP's food support and livelihood assistance programmes, Belaynish Dabe and her HIV-positive husband no longer struggle to feed themselves and their children. WFP's food support to people living with HIV helps ameliorate the double burden of lack of income and deteriorating health.