East Africa

FANTA Site – Focus Area: HIV

Summary:
HIV compromises the nutritional status of infected individuals and malnutrition worsens the effects of the disease. Nutrition interventions can help break this cycle by helping PLHIV manage symptoms, reduce susceptibility to opportunistic infections, improve nutritional status, promote response to medical treatment, and improve overall quality of life. Specifically,with support from USAID and PEPFAR, FANTA-2: a) provides technical assistance to strengthen nutrition assessment, counseling, and support for PLHIV; b) improves food assistance security programming in the context of HIV; c) produces and disseminates program guidance on nutritional care and support interventions; d) helps countries in east and southern Africa adapt HIV-nutrition guidance to their specific contexts through national guidelines, training curricula and programs, counseling materials, monitoring and evaluation support, and capacity-building activities; e) provides in-country support to integrate and scale up nutrition interventions in HIV services in Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia; f) strengthens the evidence base about the impacts of food supplementation on malnourished PLHIV; g) supports randomized controlled evaluations in Malawi and Kenya; and h) supports improved program design and monitoring and evaluation of food-assisted programs addressing HIV and its impacts through technical assistance to USAID.