Zimbabwe's food crisis.
Tendai sits quietly on her bed in her small house in Masvingo. If you look out the window, you can see the local Red Cross office just across the field. The proximity never really occurred to her, though, until about three years ago when she tested positive for HIV.
Everyday, a Red Cross volunteer visits Tendai, who lives with her daughter-in-law and five month old granddaughter. They sit and chat about what is on her mind – how her anti-retroviral treatment is going, how she is feeling, what she is worrying about. Simple things like that.
“I am really grateful for the support,” she says. “They give me a shoulder to lean on when I need to talk, and they remind that I need to continue taking my treatment.”
Over the past months, her conversations with the Red Cross carers have tended to be about food. Like many people in this dusty and dry town, Tendai can often go three or four days without anything to eat.
You get the feeling that most people in Masvingo are hungry. But this situation is particularly difficult for people like Tendai. For anti-retroviral drugs to be at their most effective, they need to be taken on a full stomach. Food helps the body absorb the drugs, and it reduces their side effects.
Without food, many people decide to stop taking the treatment, unable to cope with the nausea, exhaustion and splitting headaches.
“With or without food, I have been taking the drugs,” says Tendai. “Despite the negative effects of taking them without food.”
And the effects can be severe. In recent months, Tendai has been in and out of hospital – sometimes for up to a week – because of the side effects. As a result of her failing health, her eight-year old son is now living with his uncle. Tendai longs for the day when they can be reunited and when she can provide him with food and ensure that he can go to school.
The IFRC Zimbabwe food security appeal aims to provide assistance to about 260,100 people over the coming nine months. The programme will focus on supporting people like Tendai and her family – a group particularly and acutely vulnerable to food shortages.