UN Plans First Food Aid Campaign to Counter AIDS Pandemic

The UN plans to spearhead the world's first major campaign to use food aid to counter the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southeast Asian and East Africa, officials said Monday. The UN's World Food Program (WFP) and other UN agencies have identified an urgent need for food aid among poor families whose major bread-winner has the disease, officials said at an AIDS conference in Bangkok. Families caring for a person with AIDS often become impoverished, the agencies said. "Food aid would also serve as the financial glue to keep the family intact . . . Otherwise, the children, for example, could be forced to prostitute themselves or to go and live on the streets," said John Powell, director of the WFP Regional Bureau for Asia.

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