Usually advise the patients while they are not ill, to seek nutritional advice from a qualified clinical dietician. This helps the patient prepare and learn about nutrition.
HIV positive people suffering loss of appetite need to make an effort to ensure they are eating enough. Helpful suggestions include eating several small meals per day, taking exercise to stimulate appetite, possibly mashing or liquidizing food to ease swallowing, and seeking advice from a health provider or dietician.AIDS affects the digestive system hence one is unable to absorb essential minerals into the body, rapid weight loss and therefore the patient is fed using tubes.
The patients are also advised to eat food that is well-cooked to avoid any infection of opportunistic ailments. Patients with the HIV virus and AIDS patients are often given multiple vitamins like vitamin A since it reduces rates of being ill or even death and mineral pills e.g. zinc that prevents diarrhea.
Home based care
It is estimated that up to 90 percent of illness care is provided in the home by untrained family and associates, and up to 80 percent of AIDS related deaths occur in the home. People living with HIV & AIDS may need assistance performing simple tasks that include washing, cooking, feeding, cleaning, purchasing household essentials, going to the toilet and other needs not necessarily specific to AIDS but essential in helping a person live a relatively stable life.
It is provided by the family members and friends and worse of all is that it fall inappropriately on women and older people. And also the organizations do come in to help these people in household chores, counseling.
However, it faces problems where the family may not receive support as well as being not well trained hence the patient fails to get adequate care despite the efforts made by the family.
