Small Garden Systems
for HIV/AIDS Patients, Kenya
UWSP partners with Marquette University for project in Kenya
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM), in collaboration with Marquette University’s College of Nursing, is working to enhance the effectiveness of treatment of impoverished HIV/AIDS patients and their families in Kenya through improved nutrition.
This is a multi-year project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). UWSP’s team traveled to Kenya in July 2004 to evaluate soil conditions, water availability, and other agronomic factors for small garden systems to provide food. Via the collaborative grant, "Training a Sustainable Health Care Workforce for AIDS Care and Counseling in Kenya," GEM received $55,000 initially to determine culturally acceptable crops and appropriate, low-cost methods for growing them by health care volunteers, patients and their families on or nearby clinic grounds in three communities.
UWSP staff joined with their Marquette colleagues on visits to community-based HIV/AIDS “Centers of Excellence” in Nairobi, Mombassa and Voi, Kenya. The UWSP team was led by GEM director, Victor Phillips, and also included Emeritus Professor Milo Harpstead, soil and waste resources expert; Anna Haines, director of the Center for Land Use Education; Mai Phillips, adjunct professor of forestry; and Taylor County’s UW Extension staffer, Arlen Albrecht.
Marquette staff has been in Kenya since 2002 working on HIV/AIDS prevention, care and training of health care providers. Malnutrition has been found to play a role in increased risk of contacting HIV and other major illnesses and modern drug therapies are less effective with malnourished patients. Together, both institutions will work to educate individuals and their families on dietary nutrition to support the HIV/AIDS drug therapy, as well as training local Kenyans to install and manage small garden systems to augment nutrition and health.
UWSP-GEM Agronomic Assessment Report - August 2004 (PDF)-- A GEM Small Garden Systems team spearheads the food security and sustainable agricultural component of a collaborative USAID-funded project, Dietetics and Small Garden Systems (SGS) to Support Antiretroviral Treatment for Families Impacted by HIV/AIDS in Kenya, administered by the Marquette University College of Nursing.
For more information about the Small Garden Systems for HIV-AIDS Patents project, see the following article published in a recent issue of Marquette University's alumni magazine, Marquette Magazine:
"HOPE -- How Small Gardens Offer New Resources for Battling AIDS" (Marquette Magazine)
Related links:
Recent speech by a project collaborator, Father Angelo D’Agostino founder of Nyumbani Village, Nairobi, Kenya.
