A Rwf 9bn (US$16m) project that aims to tackle food insecurity among people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans from nine districts was launched yesterday.

The project is the second phase of the Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) Food and Nutritional Interventions Project (Ibyiringiro).

The USAID funded community-based project will seek to ensure that targeted vulnerable groups improve their livelihoods.

"Ibyiringiro will support cooperatives of people living with HIV by providing high quality services to their members, improve the nutritional status of HIV positive infants and also enrol HIV infected mothers in programs that aim to prevent mother-to-child transmissions,” the project coordinator, Rafaramalala Volanarisoa, told The New Times.

She said that the project will also provide refresher training to community health workers on nutrition and palliative care and train household members on caring for HIV positive children.

"We have paid health insurance for 3,765 beneficiaries and also identified 3,098 more vulnerable homesteads in the nine districts that will need our assistance. On top of that, we have trained 183 homesteads on kitchen gardening,” Rafaramalala said.

Rafaramalala added that CRS works hand-in-hand with the Ministry of Health and its food partners to distribute food aid to the food insecure districts of Rwanda as part of the endeavour to attain Rwanda’s Vision 2020 target.

"Our main objective is to reach out to the most vulnerable people in the HIV affected families so that we can provide them with nutritional necessities, train them on life skills and provide them with a financial start-up in order to improve their lives,” Rafaramalala said.

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