AIDS worsens food shortage - SADC official

The vulnerability of households affected by HIV/AIDS has impacted on regional food production, a Southern African Development Community (SADC) official has said. Across the SADC region increasing numbers of productive adults have become too sick to farm, or have died, leaving children and the elderly to tend the land amid growing food insecurity. Margaret Nyirenda, head of SADC's Food, Agriculture and Human Resources directorate, warned that current food shortages could worsen without urgent efforts to curb the spread of HIV. Nyirenda's comment follows the approval of an action plan for long-term food sufficiency in the region at the recent SADC summit in Tanzania. An estimated two million metric tonnes of relief aid is currently needed by some 15 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Inter Press Service news agency quoted Nyirenda as saying: "The food shortages were caused mainly by two droughts in a row, plus floods, aggravated by general reduction of resources allocation and the HIV/AIDS pandemic."