May 2004 Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket: Nutrition Should be Central to AIDS Treatment Discussion, Says JCTR

At no time has a holistic approach to health delivery been more critical than in our current predicament of HIV/AIDS, says the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR). Particularly important in ensuring effective AIDS treatment is good nutrition at household level. To achieve good nutrition at household level, which will also have some positive impact on the prevailing overstretched health delivery system, requires adequate household incomes. “As it is well known,” says Muweme Muweme, Coordinator of the Social Conditions Research Project of the JCTR, “effective health delivery does not start and end with hospitalization or visitations to health centres. It is a whole ‘array’ involving the kind of living conditions people experience.” The above premise of a holistic approach held by the JCTR has been one of the reasons for the JCTR’s constant calls for adequate household incomes, particularly in light of the ever- rising cost of living in Zambia. This cost is clearly shown in the monthly Basic Needs Basket.