REFUGEE

CHENNAI: Nutritional supplements and anti-retroviral therapy (ART) together improve the health of people with HIV/AIDS and the overall quality of

life, a midterm assessment report of a pilot project in Tamil Nadu has concluded
The Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society (TNSACS) in association with the World Food Programme has beeen supplying every month since 2007 3-kg packs of specially prepared nutritious powder to 15,000 people who have been on ART. A substantial increase in the body mass index as well as a slight improvement in hemoglobin count were found in those who took nutritional supplements along with ART.

"We are now thinking of making elements of the pilot project a state policy and provide nutrition packs to everybody who is on ART," says health secretary V K Subburaj. "We will be advocating use of the supplements for people with HIV even before the condition progresses to the immunodeficiency stage when they will be given anti-retroviral drugs. Studies have shown that delaying anti-retrovirals helps. Tamil Nadu also aims at being a model state in the country as far as care and support for people with HIV/AIDS is concerned," he adds.

TNSACS project director Vijay Kumar says that the state has been taking initiatives to prevent the infection and was indeed able to bring down the incidence substantially. "We now have to look at care and support for people with HIV/AIDS," he says.

The pilot project was based on an MoU signed on December 6, 2004 by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), to provide technical assistance to NACO to help integrate nutrition and food security for HIV/AIDS prevention and care. In June 2007, nutrition supplements were given to people on ART. While children were given 1.5 kg of supplements every month, adults received 3 kg. From a randomly selected experimental group, it was found that the mean body mass index of people who took the supplements was 1.87, as against 1.11 for those who did not.

"It's important to motivate people to take the supplements," says Mihoko Tamamura, country director and representative, WFP. In the study, less than 23% of the people surveyed had taken the supplements twice a day. While only 37% consumed the supplements once a day, about 12% never took them; 19.2% rarely did so.