EFFECTS OF HIV/AIDS ON THE LIVELIHOODS OF RURAL FARMERS IN ENUGU STATE NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

HIV/AIDS related problems have continued to be major problems for human welfare. The study was set to evaluate the impact of HIV/AIDS on livelihood of rural  farmers of Enugu State which has HIV prevalence of 5.2 with about 51,639 persons infected. The study specifically  sought  to:    describe  socio  economic  characteristic  of     people  living  with HIV/AIDS,  describe  the  major  HIV/AIDS  related  problems  in  the  rural  areas,  describe people living with HIV/AIDS’ access/responses to sources of helps to cope with their health status, determine  people living with HIV/AIDS’ access to farm assets such farm size, labour, and estimate determinants of technical efficiency of HIV/AIDS infected households.  A total of 54 HIV/AIDS affected households were selected.  Data were collected through the use of structured questionnaires.   Data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics, Principal Component Analysis, Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Lest Significant Difference (LSD) as well as Coelli 4.0 maximum likelihood estimation techniques.    Results showed that fifty six percent of the respondents were females while forty four were males. The distribution by age shows that majority of the patients were between 16-38 years. Access to free drugs and medication  was  very  limited  in  the  study  area.  Results  show  that  only  16  percent  of respondents always had access to free medication while the majority (63%) did not.  Free medication is necessary in view of the high cost of drugs and numerous diseases associated with HIV. Twenty-seven percent of the respondents often received help from NGOs while 55 percent  did not often  receive  such  help.  Principal  component  analysis  showed  that  HIV infected  households  were responding  most to family helps and also  to nutrition and free medication as well as financial help. The LSD test showed that HIV reduces the mean scores of the selected farm assets namely farm size, family labour, hired labour and income. The Maximum  Likelihood  Estimates  (MLE) estimate  showed that variance-ratio  parameter  γ* was  0.5659.  It  implied  that  56.59  percent  of  the  differences  between  observed  and  the maximum frontier output for the farmers  was due to the existing differences in efficiency levels among them. The estimated value of gamma was 0.782 for all the farmers. Its t-value was 2.636.   The statistical significance of this value at 5 percent level implied that all the farmers  were grossly  inefficient  in agricultural  production.  It showed that productivity  is positively  related  to Land Area (farm size), Family labour, Hired labour and quantity of fertilizer.  It was recommended among others that Champaign against HIV should be directed more to young people who are the most infected in order to increase the number of youths actively involved in farming.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

1.1      BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Acquired  Immune  Deficiency  Syndrome  (AIDS)  was  first  reported  in the  United States of America  in 1981 and has since become  a major worldwide  epidemic  (National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, NIAID, 2004). Acquired  Immune  Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus  (HIV). The virus and the infection itself are known as HIV. The term Aids is used to  mean the later states of HIV infection. Therefore the terms HIV infection and AIDS are regarded as the different stages of the same diseases (Cable Network News, CNN, 2005).

It is now accepted that HIV/AIDS is not just a health issue. In the recently developed poverty reduction strategy paper, the Nigerian Government designated HIV/AIDS as a cross cutting issue and the Nigerian national HIV/AIDS strategic framework 2000 – 2004 calls for an expanded, multi-sectional National response to the epidemic.

However, the call for other sectors to develop capacity to respond to HIV/AIDS as an epidemic  requiring  a  multi-sectional  responds  still  lags  behind.  In  many  sectors,  policy making still proceeds as if HIV/AIDS never happened. The estimates for world population rate are being revised downwards due to millions of past and projected deaths resulting from HIV/AIDS (Qemar, 2003). Despite the growing efforts, organizations involved in agricultural research  and  development  generally  have  limited  understanding  of  how  AIDS  effects agricultural system and even more limited knowledge of how agriculture may contribute to the spread of HIV. For example, the shocks of HIV/AIDS is observed for FAO (2003) are being felt all over the world, the situation in Sub-Sahara Africa is the most alarming, as can be seen from Table 1.

In Malawi, poles of attraction include rural weekly markets and trading centres  of agricultural produce. Villagers and agricultural sector employees mentioned these places as important sites of social and sexual contact between rural and urban people, and among rural people themselves (Bota, 2001). Market operating times were said in some cases to favour sexual relations more than commercial ones.  Garnett and Anderson, (1996) noted that where people move into and out of, or between situations of risk, they can contribute to widening the epidemic and raising infection rates in areas  that hitherto had low prevalence rate.

Table 1. 1: Estimated Adult HIV Prevalence by Region

S/N	Region	Prevalence (%)
1	Australia and New Zealand	0.13
2	Caribbean	2.11
3	East Asia and Pacific	0.06
4	Eastern Europe and Central Asia	0.21
5	Latin America	0.49
6	North Africa and Middle East	0.12
7	North America	0.58
8	South and South-East Africa	0.54
9	Sub-Sahara Africa	0.57
10	Western Europe	0.23

Source:  UNAIDS, 2004

The joint Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) report (2000) estimated that  70 percent  of all HIV/AIDS  cases  worldwide  are  in Sub-Sahara  Africa,  which  is the  most severely affected region. Also in terms of national level comparison, the 21 countries with the highest HIV prevalence are all in Africa. The total number of people living with HIV rose in

2004 to reach its highest level ever. As at December 2004, the estimated 39.4 million people were living with the virus (UNAIDS, 2004) as indicated in Table 2:

The global AIDS epidemic has killed 3.1 million in the past years. Sub-Sahara Africa remains so for the worst affected region with the death rate put at 2.3 million and 25.4 million people are living with HIV as at the end of 2004 (UNAIDS, 2004). The Joint United Nations programme  on AIDS (UNAIDS)  noted that women and girls make up  to almost 57% of young people of all HIV infection in Sub-Sahara  Africa, where a  striking 76% of young people (aged 15 – 24 years) living with HIV are female.

Given  that  this  disease  is  predominantly  heterosexually  transmitted,  it  was fairly  obvious  that  it  had  serious  implications  for  society  and  economy  and  in particular for systems of production which are heavily dependent upon human labour. Two pieces of research explored this problem. A small scale simulation study using farm management data was undertaken by FAO (Gillespie, 1989) and a field study funded by DFID in 1989 (Barnetta,  1990). The conclusions  of these studies were

straightforward  and to a degree predictable:  unusual levels of death and illness in mature adults would restrict labour inputs to livelihood activities.

TABLE  1. 2. WORLD HIV/AIDS AFFECTED POPULATION AND DEATHS

S/N                        Region

Adult and

Children living

Adult and

Children Death

       with HIV             Due to AIDS  

1	Australia and New Zealand	35,000	700
2	Caribbean	440,000	36,000
3	East Asia and Pacific	1.1 million	51,000
4	Eastern Europe and Central Asia	1.4 million	60,000
5	Latin America	1.7 million	95,000
6	North Africa and Middle East	540,000	28,000
7	North America	1.6 million	16,000
8	South and South-East Africa	7.1 million	490,000
9	Sub-Sahara Africa	25.4 million	2.3 million
10	Western Europe	610,000	6,500

Source: UNAIDS, 2004

Wherever such effects were seen, richer households would be more able to cope than poorer, and within households both gender and age were likely to be strong modulators of income and assets effects (Blaike and Obbo, 1990). Further than this, it seemed likely that there would be systemic  effects whereby cropping and husbandry  patterns would alter to accommodate labour constraints resulting from the increased illness and death.

Microfinance institutions (MFIS) also run a high risk of falling victims of the effects of this epidemic because their traditional mechanisms for ensuring the safety and soundness of their portfolios and capital are inadequate for coping with the widespread consequences of the disease (Bonnerd and Patricia, 2002).   Even microfinance has  been called on to assist household affected by HIV/AIDS, because most attention has been on the current and future victims on treatment, support, services and prevention. MFIS looks at the present epidemic in terms  of  survival  because  the  consequence  of  HIV/AIDS  threatens  their  very  existence, especially those working in the rural sector (Evans, Anna Cora, 2002).

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