Our experience has shown us that if we can support the AMPATH with medicine and food supplements for about six months, they will regain the strength to farm and produce their own food again. The HAART and Harvest Initiative, or HHI, is the cornerstone of AMPATH's patient response to hunger and starvation. This initiative includes demonstration farms that foster and teach appropriate, relevant agriculture techniques. The initiative also includes a high production farm that utilizes modern farming techniques including continuous irrigation.

Produce from the demonstration farms and the high-production farm--fruits, vegetables, milk, eggs--are given to needy patients for up to six months. The United Nations World Food Program complements AMPATH's food basket with supplements of corn, beans, and oil. A single dollar feeds a family of four for a day.

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Nutrition: The HAART and Harvest Initiative

HAART and Harvest When Indiana University and Moi University (Kenya) physicians responded to the AIDS pandemic in Africa by creating the Academic Model for Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), they discovered that providing anti-retroviral drugs and support for their safe administration, while the core of HIV treatment, can not fully solve many of their patients’ problems.

The majority of patients cared for by AMPATH are among the poorest in the world. Sick themselves and lacking basic human necessities, many patients have lost their spouse to the disease. Most patients are the sole support for multiple vulnerable children. Due to the stigma of HIV/AIDS that still endures in many regions of western Kenya, patients are often cut off from their family networks when they discover their HIV status and lose their jobs for fear of spreading the disease or being unable to work. Others are too sick to tend to their subsistence farms.

AMPATH provides food support to its most vulnerable patients and their dependents. All new patients entering AMPATH are screened by a nutritionist and those found to be food insecure are provided with a nutrition prescription assuring access to 100% of daily nutrition requirements. Food support covers the index patient and all dependents “eating from the same pot”. This period of intensive feeding lasts for six months i.e. during the patient’s initial period of antiretroviral drug treatment and immune reconstitution.

After six months the majority of patients are expected to provide for themselves. Any remaining patients determined unable to manage their food needs are eligible to enter a weaning program which gives them access to 50% of daily food requirements along with training through the Family Preservation Initiative aimed at enhancing long term food security.

See photos of food support to the most vulnerable patients.