Statement of Senator Russ Feingold at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Foreign HIV/AIDS and Hunger Relief
Posted at 19:52:55 on May 11, 2004
Senator Feingold made a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today (read full statement here).
In July 2002, in the midst of the horrible headlines about food crisis in Southern Africa, I asked the General Accounting Offices to look into the underlying causes of the crisis and the U.S. response. Their report, issued in June 2003, made clear that one cannot look seriously at the food security issues in Africa without also considering the consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The report found that AIDS had exacerbated the food crisis by reducing productivity and agricultural output and by dramatically limiting the capacity of communities to cope with hardships like a bad harvest, or rising food prices. In other words, AIDS has made already vulnerable communities more vulnerable, such that setbacks that might not have been catastrophic before can now push people over the edge into crisis.
At the same time, no one who has been on the ground to look at the nature of the AIDS crisis can escape the conclusion that good nutrition and food security are necessary ingredients for the success of initiatives to fight AIDS. Medical interventions must occur in a context of sound nutrition if they are to succeed, and, more broadly, overall economic insecurity, including food insecurity, can render specific populations, like women and girls, especially vulnerable to contracting AIDS.
- Trae
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