Website review: http://www.fao.org/hivaids/
http://www.fao.org/hivaids/
Labour intensive farming systems with low mechanisation and agricultural input are more vulnerable to AIDS. That is one of the many small, but vital facts that we learn while getting the answers to the bigger question of how AIDS affects food security. After all, 80 per cent of the people in the countries hardest hit by the disease depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Sick people cannot work in fields. They have to buy food, but they do not have the money. On top of that, they have to pay for higher healthcare costs. Parents die before they are able to pass on traditional knowledge about farming and local crop varieties to the next generation. Food consumption, in fact, drops by 40 per cent in homes afflicted by HIV/AIDS.
To take care of this problem, this multilingual website, maintained by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, seeks to work as a centralised source of information on the link between agriculture and the disease. In other words, a tool to assist agricultural policy-makers, researchers, non-governmental organisations and people living with HIV/AIDS formulate a response to the epidemic. The information available on funds, labour-saving technologies, traditional knowledge, nutrition, rural institutions, social safety nets and monitoring systems to evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing programmes on HIV/AIDS can be used by the agricultural sector to revise its programmes.
This is a smartly designed site, neatly divided into the impact of AIDS and the responses to it. There are also links to other United Nations sites dealing with HIV and AIDS.