A review of household and community responses to the HIV / AIDS epidemic in the rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract

This literature review focuses on household and community coping responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. A variety of coping response strategies are identified and categorized as follows: 1) improving food security; 2) raising and supplementing income; and 3) alleviating the loss of labor. The most frequently adopted strategies are those not requiring any cash such as the intra-household labor re-allocation taking children out of school and diversifying household crop production and decreasing the area cultivated. These responses are considered short-term strategies with long-term consequences for survival. Several policy options that can be adopted to strengthen the coping capacity of households with the impact of HIV/AIDS are also mentioned. The review also provides information on the different community initiatives that have sprung up to support and mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS. It further provides policy recommendations for the improvement of rural-household access to limited resources the provision of social assistance programs and the development of agencies that would help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 140 citations exist upstream.