Zambia, 04 March 2010-(KC Team)-Marita Besa is aged 35 years and is married with three children. The youngest is 11 months old. She is co-infected with TB and HIV and is currently on medication for both illnesses.

She lives in Kanyama, a sprawling shanty compound which is flooded at this time of the year due to the heavy rains.

It is Monday and she wades through the muddy water from her doorstep with her baby strapped to her back. Even though she is not feeling well today, she has to walk the five kilometres across the city to go and get her food supplements which are being given out by a community based organisation in Lusaka.

The food package consists of mealie meal, cooking oil, packets of sugar, beans, small fish and soya pieces. As soon as she gets back home with the food packages, her colleagues who are also co-infected and are not so lucky as herself to be part of the group receiving food supplements, will have a share of the food.

Another friend, Jesta, is so weak that she lies in bed hoping that a miracle will happen. She shares her food parcels with the five friends. At least the food will keep them going for five days.

The luck is not for long though because Marita has just received her last food supplements after six months of her being on the program. She breaks the news to her friends who watch her and are speechless for a moment. This means sure starvation for the women. The organisation has run out of funding for the food supplements and therefore cannot continue.

Tuberculosis cases have been increasing steadily over the years with about 1,200 new cases every quarter for Lusaka Province along. One of the contributing factors are the high poverty levels as 80% of the population lives below the poverty line leading to unemployment, HIV/AIDS and other social ills.

The majority of the population live in informal settlements which have now become breeding grounds for waterborne diseases such as cholera and mosquitoes lead to malaria in PLHIV who already have a compromised immune system.

TB, being an opportunistic infection, comes in when the immune system is weakened as is the case when there is poor or no nutrition at all.

The lack of nutrition is crucial since the World Food Program discontinued their food distribution exercise on June 30, 2008. The few organisations which are distributing food supplements are overwhelmed with demand from the large number of vulnerable people requiring food. They cannot stretch their budgets any further due to the limited amounts of money given to them by donors.

In the case of the organisation helping vulnerable populations by providing nutrition supplements, their funding has now come to an end. This spells doom for these people, unless a miracle happens.

I do hope the donors and stakeholders will look into this matter urgently as a lot of lives are at stake.

This story is also available here: http://www.healthdev.net/site/post.php?s=6548