The Scourge of AIDS
AIDS poses one of the most potent health threats to poor households. High rates of infection are common in many of the poorest nations in Africa and Asia, and the disease has begun to ravage rural household economies in many areas. When AIDS strikes a family member—particularly a key wage-earner— it administers the kind of health shock that often drives the family into profound poverty. In the Tanzanian village of Kagabiro, households with an AIDS patient spent between 29 and 43 percent of household labor on AIDS-related duties— time that previously was available for earning money (Tibaijuka 1997 in Stover and Bollinger 1999:5). A study in Côte d’IVoire found that when a family member with AIDS died or moved away for treatment, average consumption in the family fell by as much as 44 percent the following year due to loss of income (Bechu 1998 in Stover and Bollinger 1999:4). Research on AIDS-afflicted families in rural Ethiopia found that the average cost of medical treatment, funeral, and mourning expenses amounted to several times the average household income (Demeke 1993 in Stover and Bollinger 1999:4).
AIDS also has profound effects on food security. In eastern Africa, AIDS-related labor shortages have led to lower crop yields, smaller amounts of land being cultivated, and a move from cash crops to subsistence crops, as the rural agricultural economy retrenches.
