KAMPALA, 23 September 2008 (IRIN) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to withdraw food aid to HIV-positive people as part of broader cutbacks to its Ugandan programmes caused by a funding shortfall.

"For the past six months we have had hardly any funding for HIV/AIDS activities, and as a result, many people we have been supporting have already gone without nutritional support for some time," Stanlake Samkange, WFP's representative in Uganda, told IRIN/PlusNews. "We have reviewed our programmes and are providing support to areas where there are fewer actors and we have better funding."

He added that there a number of other governmental and non-governmental organisations providing HIV/AIDS support in Uganda.

The cutbacks are expected to affect a total of about 1.5 million people, including children covered by WFP's school feeding programme. The UN agency has been supporting an estimated 173,000 HIV-positive people with food supplements.

The decision has drawn criticism from HIV advocates. "HIV infected people on treatment need food. They are not strong enough to engage in agriculture to feed themselves," Lydia Mungherera, an HIV-positive Ugandan physician and AIDS activist, told IRIN/PlusNews. "Many people living with HIV die of opportunistic diseases and of course, with the rising food prices and declining agricultural activities, the withdrawal [of food aid] will affect them."

"We are always reviewing our programmes, and if funding becomes available and there is a role for WFP to play, we will be happy to help," Samkange said. "But to make commitments to feed people when we are not sure we can fulfil them would be irresponsible, and could even prevent people who do have the ability to provide food from doing so."

According to James Kigozi, spokesman for the Uganda AIDS Commission, WFP's support was never intended to be permanent; he added that new sources of food aid would have to be found to ensure that recipients of WFP support did not suffer as a result of the cutbacks.

WFP will continue to provide food aid to HIV-positive people who fit into its other support categories, such as internally displaced people, children in the chronically food insecure region of Karamoja in northeastern Uganda and new mothers and their babies.

en/kr/ks

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.IRINnews.org

IRIN news