HIV Global Epidemic: Young People

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

We must give credit to PEPFAR, and to George W Bush, who set it up, for the work it has done around the world in tackling this disease. Certainly, that would be our expectation. We have a very close working relationship with USAID in this area and we fully expect that it will continue, into the future, to tackle and achieve the global goal of eradicating HIV as a public health threat by 2030.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, good nutrition is important for all of us, but it is particularly important for those living with HIV or AIDS. Can my noble friend say what is being done to ensure that there are proper trigger points when DfID is providing aid so that nutrition is taken as a key point, particularly when treatments cause wastage, lipid malabsorption and other issues to do with dietary needs?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is right to point to this. When we look at HIV strategies and DfID’s work around the world and with our partners in the World Health Organization, it is very dangerous to see them siloed. Strategies must be cross-cutting, across all the interventions and all the humanitarian responses which we have to this disease, to bring hope and prevention in the attempt to eradicate AIDS by 2030.