Judith Mulama

Diet Diversity and Nutritional Status: Nutrition Among Adults on Antiretrovirals Judith Mulama

Nutrition plays a critical role in determining individual's health status and ability to overcome illness, including HIV& AIDS. Health professionals and nutritionists have recommended diet diversity as one of the means of fostering an optimal diet and ensuring nutrition. Despite the increasing number of people being initiated on ARVs, consumption of diversified diets by PLWHA on ARV drugs is still not clear. In this book, Judith assesses the relationship between diet diversity and nutritional status among PLWHA on ARVs. She reports the diet diversity patterns among PLWHA on ARVs and further determines their nutritional status. She establishes the factors that affect diet diversity and discovers the effects of ARV drugs side effects on food intake and the immunity progress among PLWHA and ARV drugs at New Nyanza provincial hospital, Kenya. Issues related to ART in resource poor settings have become increasingly relevant to PLWHA, care givers, service providers and programmers of components that include ART. Understanding diet diversity, nutritional status and immunity progress among PLWHA could assist in drawing policies related to nutrition and ARVs.