Promoting nutrition awareness among those living with HIV and Aids is the purpose of a manual that was released today. The manual will be used across the Caribbean not primarily by those who have Aids - but by the healthcare processionals who have to take care of them. It's a serious condition and managing it means eating right, and the manual says what HIV and Aids afflicted should eat and when. Conducting the training for Belize's health professionals is Barbadian June Holdip and she says tells us what the training will include.
June Holdip,
"It has to do with nutrition in the treatment and care of persons living with HIV or Aids. Persons who are infected with HIV have special needs and therefore it is important we recognize those special needs and cater to those needs from a nutritional perspective. When we talking here about nutrition, we are only looking at one component of that total care for those individuals, nutrition is extremely important because when the immune system is affected by the virus, it calls for increased requirements of specifically protein, some of the vitamins, and some of the minerals; this is all in an effort to help keep the immune system functioning as best as possible. We need to be able to bring this information to the forefront and share with other healthcare workers some of the things that can be done to help address of the side effects of the medication."
The training goes for three days.
