HIV/AIDS Ravaging Environment

Fredrick Mugira 14/11/07
Health and environment experts are warning of a devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on environment and subsequent failure to attain sustainable development in most countries affected by this pandemic.

Participants who attended the East Africa regional conference on Population, Health, and Environment heard on 13/11/07 that HIV/AIDS could in future bring environmental conservation initiatives to standstill unless something is done now to address this.

Benjamin Mutebi Lutimba, an official from the Infectious Diseases Institute in Kampala Uganda told field practitioners, policymakers, researchers, journalists, community leaders and advocates from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda who attended HIV/AIDS and Environment session that labor for environmental management is being lost because of AIDS. He was presenting the research findings he has just got from a study he carried out on the impact of HIV/AIDS on environmental. His research studied 50 persons living with HIV/AIDS in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda.

The research found that “as people are lost to HIV/AIDS, the environment would tend to be poorly maintained,” Lutimba revealed. He continued to reveal that 10 percent of the 50 persons studied contended that, “ as environmentalists die, this means that there would be no one to advocate for environmental protection laws.”

"35 percent said remittances from environmental activities decline or even totally cease to exist, reason being that if people are infected with HIV then there would be no labor for them to say plant more trees, advocate for forest reserves and the rest of it,” Lutimba disclosed. He also stressed that persons who are found with HIV/AIDS tend to lose hope in future and look at themselves as if they are going to die the next day. This, he said makes them not to think about what environment is going to be in future.

Perhaps what is most stunning, according to Daulos Mauambeta, the head of the Wildlife and Environment Society in Malawi is that as AIDS continues to kill more and more people, there is increased demand for coffins. Most coffins are made of wood. This would mean increased cutting of trees to make these coffins.

Mauambeta disclose this while addressing the same participants at this conference.

“But also we have got issue of firewood, during funeral, when somebody is dead in my country you have to have wood from the day that particular person has died to prepare food for those people that are coming to be with you up to the day when the dead body is buried, it can be about three days, that process can consume a lot of fire wood,” contended Mauambeta.

He said that in some countries, forestlands were being converted into graveyards. “In Zimbabwe within a single day you can have 16 to 15 graves being dug and people being buried on everyday basis, even in Malawi we have got that particular scenario,” Mauambeta continue to revealed. He stressed that environment on such pieces of land is being destroyed and the land is converted into graveyards. Mauambeta also stressed that in some cases when parents die, they live land to orphans who have got no experience in managing it.

Mauambeta suggested that in a move to mitigate this, there is need for alternatives. He called for the use of bamboo instead of timber coffins. For firewood, he says there is need for use of solar energy to prepare food during funerals among others.
ENDS