Press Release 00/37
UNAIDS/FAO:
HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC IS SHIFTING FROM CITIES TO RURAL AREAS - NEW FOCUS ON
AGRICULTURAL POLICY NEEDED
Rome/Geneva, 22 June - The fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic in developing
countries has been mostly perceived as an "urban problem", but the absolute
numbers of people living with HIV are actually increasing rapidly in many
rural areas, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Joint
United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said today.
In some countries, the gap in HIV infection rates between urban and rural
areas is narrowing. But so many people in developing countries live in rural
areas that, in terms of absolute numbers, the numbers of rural inhabitants
who are infected are very high.
In a new publication entitled Sustainable Agricultural/Rural Development
and Vulnerability to the AIDS Epidemic FAO/UNAIDS called upon governments
to pay more attention to the real burden of HIV/AIDS on local communities
and to ensure that rural development also aims at combating the epidemic.
"HIV/AIDS is not only a health but also a development problem," FAO/UNAIDS
said.
The report concludes that the rural epidemic has been underestimated: In
India, where 73% of the population is rural, recent studies have shown that
HIV is spreading faster in some rural areas than in urban ones. In many countries
in Africa, urban and rural HIV prevalence rates are similar.
The report says it is urgent to address rural HIV prevention and care needs.
Though HIV prevalence is rising in rural areas, the infrastructure needed
for prevention programmes - counselling and testing, condom availability
and AIDS information - is less developed.
Moreover, health facilities are often inadequate in rural communities, which
bear the main burden of care for people with HIV. Many HIV infected people
return from the cities to their villages when they fall ill. Rural families
provide most of the care for AIDS patients; the households mostly bear the
costs for food, medicine and funeral expenses. Agricultural development policies
rarely take this fact into consideration.
Besides the human suffering, AIDS threatens sustainable agriculture and rural
development. Sickness and death of an adult family member can result in the
inability of a household to cultivate the land. Tending for the sick can
take a considerable amount of time, which is then no longer available for
agriculture. As a result, more remote fields tend to be left fallow, and
switching from labour-intensive to less labour-intensive crops is more likely.
Families can wind up having to sell off their livestock.
AIDS widows may have no legal rights to land and property after their husbands'
death due to customary inheritance laws. Many women therefore often have
to leave their homes and are facing severe poverty.
"Rural HIV often remains silent and invisible," according to the report,
because of poor health infrastructure, restricted access to health facilities
and inadequate surveillance. For this reason, HIV in rural populations often
remains "an unknown entity for policy-makers and development planners."
Where people are exposed to poverty, food insecurity, gender inequality,
migration, war and civil conflict, their vulnerability to HIV increases,
FAO/UNAIDS said. In rural areas of most developing countries, therefore,
the spread of HIV is accelerated by migration, trade, the movement of refugees
and strengthened rural-urban linkages. Considerations relating to HIV/AIDS
should be incorporated in agricultural and rural development, the UN
organizations urged. Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development should
be sensitised about HIV/AIDS education and advocacy, and where required,
should review their policies and activities. Households affected by the pandemic
should have better access to and control over resources such as extension,
credit and land.
The study mentions two types of rural areas particularly vulnerable to HIV:
those along truck routes and those that are sources of migrant labour to
urban areas. Many traditional subsistence areas are also vulnerable if people
are migrating from there in the agricultural lean season. Nomadic pastoralists
are at increased risk of contracting HIV due to their mobility, marginalization,
and limited access to social services. Women remaining on farms with seasonal
migrant husbands are also vulnerable to HIV infection if their husbands bring
the disease back with them.
According to UNAIDS, an estimated 33.6 million people were living with HIV/AIDS
at the end of 1999, of which over 90 percent were in developing countries.
Africa, which accounts for only one tenth of the world's population, bears
the brunt of the epidemic with more than 80 percent of all deaths to date.
In Asia, HIV seropositivity rates are still comparatively low but the spread
of the pandemic is rapid. Almost 6 million people are believed to be infected
with HIV.
**********
For more information please contact Erwin Northoff, FAO Media Officer, tel:
0039-06-5705 3105, e-mail:
Erwin.Northoff@fao.org and FAO's
Web site http://www.fao.org or UNAIDS
http://www.unaids.org/
For more information, please contact Anne Winter, UNAIDS, Geneva, (+41 22)
791 4577
Audio Clip:
Jacques du Guerny, Chief, Population Programme Service and FAO Focal Point
for HIV/Aids, explains in an interview why AIDS is increasingly spreading
in rural areas of developing countries.
You can listen or download this interview (3min54sec) :
In Realaudio (480 Kb- Instant play)
ftp://ext-ftp.fao.org/Radio/RealAudio/AIDS-engl.rm
In mp3 (Broadcast quality , to be downloaded, 1,822 Kb)
ftp://ext-ftp.fao.org/Radio/MP3/AIDS-engl.mp3
Instructions for listening to audio files:
- To play the RealAudio files requires the RealPlayer software, see
http://www.real.com. (RealPlayer 7 Basic
is free)
- To play the mp3 files requires any mp3 player software: Winamp, Windows
Media player, Quicktime 4.0;RealplayerG2, etc...
All free on the Web:
http://www.winamp.com;
http://quicktime.com ;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/
If you can't download, please call for a feed: Eric Deleu (radio unit)
039-06-5705 6863 / 3223
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