Dying with Food Problems
posted: 14/10/2009
Researchers in Canada have found that people taking HIV treatment who experience 'food insecurity' have an increased risk of death. The many destitute people refused asylum or leave to remain in the UK, as well as people on limited benefits and low incomes here, could face the same risk.
Food insecurity means not having enough nutritious food, or having uncertainty about obtaining food. Earlier research amongst injecting drug users taking HIV treatment in San Francisco showed that food-insecure patients were less likely to have an undetectable viral load.
Skinny and Hungry
Now researchers have found that current or former drug users in Vancouver, Canada, who are taking HIV treatment have a 50% increase in the risk of death if they experience food insecurity. The risk was especially high for people who were food insecure and underweight.
They recommend that poor patients in richer countries should receive food supplementation, and that there should be wider efforts to alleviate poverty.
More money or a Dietician?
Many HIV clinics in the UK have a specialist dietician who can provide information about diet. Specialist HIV social workers can also help you make sure that you have enough to eat. However the problem is largely one of poverty.
The government has just cut the weekly rate for a single asylum seeker over 25 who is destitute and from £42.16 to £35.13 a week from early October. At the same time, benefits for asylum seekers who are lone parents with one child are frozen at £42.16 instead of rising in line with consumer price inflation, leaving them £2 a week worse off.
Diary of an Asylum Seeker with her child scraping by on weekly asylum support from NASS.
There is more information on nutrition in NAM’s information booklet Nutrition. You can download it here.
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