HIV epidemic compounded by starvation in Zimbabwe

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HIV epidemic compounded by starvation in Zimbabwe

By Dr Sam L J Page, Zimbabwe, May 2002

Living with AIDS
Mrs Emily Mudzipurwa is aged 59 and lives in Marange communal area. She says she is HIV positive. Her husband died 4 years ago. Since then Mrs Mudzipurwa has been the sole provider for her 4 children (including one orphaned grandchild) aged 6 to 15 years. Last year her eldest daughter was forced to drop out of school because there was no money for school fees.

WFP food distribution at Matebeland in Zimbabwe - part of WFP's efforts to feed 558,000 people facing food shortages caused by drought, Government land acquisition activities, rising maize prices and economic downturn.

WFP has warned that much more food aid needs to reach Zimbabwe and the rest of southern Africa in the next three-four months if the Agency is to avert a regional disaster.

This year Mrs Mudzipurwa was able to sell a goat and use the proceeds to pay for her daughter to attend Form 3. Unfortunately, this family did not harvest any maize this season due to drought and the well was too dry to provide sufficient irrigation for their garden. In order to feed her family, Mrs Mudzipurwa was forced to take part in the government's "Food for Work" programme, which involved reclaiming gullies by planting them with aloes. This is backbreaking work even for healthy people. Two weeks before Mrs Mudzipurwa had collapsed and has been bed-ridden ever since.

Mrs Mudzipurwa is now showing the first signs of full-blown AIDS. In the absence of extended family support, her eldest daughter will again have to drop out of school in order to take care of her mother. She or a younger child will also have to take part in the "Food for Work" programme so that the family can get maize.

Difficult choices
Margaret Shabane was born in 1943. She lives in Mhondoro and is now responsible for the care of five orphaned grandchildren, aged 9 to 13 years. Two of her daughters are dying of AIDS - she is nursing one, while relatives in Mount Darwin are caring for the other. Her son recently lost his first-born child due to AIDS. He is HIV positive and has become mentally deranged, possibly due to viral meningitis.

Mrs Shabane's maize crop also failed this year, but she does expect to harvest rape from her small stream-bank garden. The money she gains from this venture will be used to pay school fees. Mrs Shabane will soon have to choose between maintaining food security and sending her orphaned grandchildren to school. However, it is unlikely that these children will ever go to secondary school.

Orphaned Households
Alfred Muketsi is 86, while his wife, Clara is 71 years old. They now have 7orphaned grandchildren, whose ages range from 6 to 14, between them. Mr Muketsi has a citrus orchard, which he has been carefully tending since 1985. He harvests more than half a tonne of oranges each year but as he does not have transport he can only sell them locally for a fraction of what he would get in Harare. He said most of them are left to rot. The family's maize was a complete write off this year and they do not have sufficient water to sustain a garden. All of the children are attending school at the moment, however, Mrs Muketsi said "I feel bad when they don't have enough to eat".

Mr Uketsi is very frail and is unlikely to live long enough to parent all his orphaned grandchildren into adulthood. His wife will be unable to farm sufficient land to ensure food security for all her grandchildren and it is probable that the older children will soon have to drop out of school to help with the farming.

The need for help
An appropriate international response: In the short-term all these people urgently need food aid, but in the longer term they need zero external input, pest tolerant and low labour-requiring food and cash crops. Unfortunately, most of Zimbabwe's traditional food crops have been marginalised by more than 20 years' of commercialised agriculture which has relied on hybrid maize and costly, high input technologies.

However, it is heartening to see that many older people who now have the responsibility for household food security, are re-claiming indigenous practices and filling their gardens with cassava, taro, sweet potato and rice and their fields with traditional small-grain crops, such as sorghum and millet, intercropped with cowpea and cucurbits. In order to ensure nutrition security, farmers in AIDS affected areas should also be encouraged to plant fast growing fruit trees and perennial legumes, including banana, oyster nut, paw-paw, pigeon pea, tree tomato and guava in their gardens and around their homesteads.

Zimbabwe's farmers urgently require improved planting material for all these crops. In addition, the provision of free schooling would not only reduce poverty but also ensure that all orphans have a future and, in due course, will be able to contribute to the re-building of their society.

(Interviews by Fortunate Nyakanda, Shepherd Musiyandaka and Sam Page, May 2002)

Posted by Dr Sam L J Page Email: sampage_zim@yahoo.co.uk

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