The Food Crisis Affected Households with HIV the Same as Other Households in Mozambique

The food crisis affected households in Mozambique, with a real deterioration of welfare in terms of income, food consumption and the nutritional status of children between 2007 and 2008, according to a new working paper by Damien de Walque, Harounan Kazianga, Mead Over, and Julia Vaillant. Both HIV and comparison households were affected equally in those measures, despite concerns that HIV households would suffer more. Indeed, although HIV households were worse off before the crisis, they experienced the same reduction in welfare as others did. The initiation of antiretroviral treatment and better services in health facilities seem to have counter-balanced the effect of the crisis by improving the health of patients and their participation in the labor force.

The effect of the change in welfare on adherence to treatment was assessed using the frequency of visits to a health facility of patients and their treatment outcomes, as both variables can proxy for adherence to treatment. This is a crucial issue as it affects both the health of the patient and overall public health, because not following treatment protocols could lead to the development of resistant forms of the virus. The change in welfare did not affect the frequency of visits, but people who experienced a negative income shock also experienced a reduction or a slower progression in treatment outcomes.