When you get involved with World Vision's 30 Hour Famine program, you learn a lot about the devastation caused by hunger. The fact that roughly 26,000 children each day die due to hunger and related causes is staggering. But hunger is not the only problem facing families and children in the developing world today. Another killer is AIDS, and the two issues are anything but separate.
 

For many of us, there really isn’t a connection between being hungry and suffering from the causes of AIDS. Being hungry means not having enough to eat, and AIDS is a disease that has nothing to do with that. Right?
 

Wrong.
 

Hunger and AIDS are often linked. In many cases, being hungry adds to the struggles of dealing with AIDS, and vice versa. To get a better idea of just how hunger and HIV/AIDS are connected, think about this:

  • Out of all the people in the world who are infected with HIV (over 33 million), 95% live in developing countries. This means that most people infected with HIV live in areas where getting enough to eat is a daily struggle. And when you have a disease that makes you weak and tired, it’s that much more difficult to get enough food for you and your family.
  • A vital tool in helping people with AIDS are antiretroviral drugs. In order for these drugs to have any sort of positive effect, a person taking them needs to have good nutrition and eat regularly. When a person doesn’t have enough to eat when taking these drugs, the results can be devastating.
  • People affected by HIV and AIDS are often less able to grow or find food to eat. In Africa alone, 7 million farmers have died from AIDS, and with less local food production, it’s even more difficult for people in AIDS affected communities to get enough to eat.
     

In the PDF linked below, we are trying to provide students with the resources to learn more about the complicated relationship between hunger and AIDS; two issues that are different, but intricately linked.
 

Click here to download the 30 Hour Famine AIDS module. [PDF]