Aidah Nanyonjo
20 April 2008
Kampala — LACK of clean water increases the risk of diarrhoea among people living with HIV/AIDS, the executive director of the Uganda Water and Sanitation Network, John Byarugaba, has said.
The immuno-compromised status of people living with HIV/AIDS renders them more susceptible to opportunistic infections, including those related to water and sanitation," he explained.
This situation calls for the integration of sanitation issues into AIDS programmes. The scope should include aspects of risks and benefits associated with hygiene, hand washing, faecal management, safe water and waste disposal.
He was speaking during a workshop on HIV/AIDS and Sanitation at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala, recently.
Byarugaba said ensuring proper sanitation keeps people with HIV stronger and well-nourished, which enables them to look after their households.
He said opportunistic infections negatively impact on the quality of life and can speed up the progression of HIV.
"Opportunistic infections cause a significant loss of man hour, income, suffering and death," Byarugaba noted.
Paul Luyima, the assistant commissioner in charge of environmental health at the Ministry of Health, said over 400 people die of diarrhoea-related diseases every day in Uganda.
"Access to safe water is a basic human need as well as a right for all. Unfortunately, this has not been realised in most developing countries," Luyima said.
The burden, he said, was not only on HIV-infected people, but also their families, leading to low productivity.
According to the Water and Sanitation Programme report 2007, households with HIV- infected persons require more than 20 litres of water a day.
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Continuing failure to acknowledge that washing genitals with clean water after sex -- post-sex hygiene -- is a way of reducing risk of AIDS makes this argument seem blind to cutting-edge prevention research in this field. See the following:
JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes:Volume 43(1)September 2006pp 117-118 Independent Association of Hygiene, Socioeconomic Status, and Circumcision With Reduced Risk of HIV Infection Among Kenyan Men [Epidemiology and Social Science] Meier, Amalia S. PhD*∥; Bukusi, Elizabeth A. MBChB, M Med(ObGyn), MPH§¶; Cohen, Craig R. MD, MPH#; Holmes, King K. MD, PhD§
From the Departments of *Laboratory Medicine, Gynecology, and Medicine, and the §Center for AIDS and STD, University of Washington, Seattle; the ∥Program in Biostatistics, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle; the ¶Center for Microbiology Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya; and the #Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science, University of California, San Francisco.
Received for publication November 23, 2005; accepted April 18, 2006.
Supported by the University of Washington Center for AIDS Research (AI 27757), STI-Topical Microbicide Cooperative Research Center (AI 31448), and AIDS International Research & Training Program (NIH FIC D43 TW00007).
Reprints: King K. Holmes, MD, PhD, Harborview Medical Center, Box 359931, 325 9th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104 (e-mail: worthy@u.washington.edu).
Article Outline Abstract METHODS RESULTS DISCUSSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS REFERENCES Citing Articles Figures/Tables Table 1 Abstract TOP Summary: Among Kenyan men recruited as sex partners of women with genital symptoms, 22 of 150 were HIV seropositive. Because male HIV infection and male hygiene were unexpectedly found to be associated with each other, we examined the relationship of 5 hygiene variables with HIV infection in the men in a principal components analysis, controlling for socioeconomic status and other potential confounders. By multivariate analyses, HIV infection in men was not only independently associated with previous illness (odds ratio [OR], 5.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-19.1) and inversely associated with being circumcised (OR, 0.12; 95% CI, 0.02-0.91), but also independently associated with a combined measure of hygiene (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.19-0.90).