Most people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in Otukpo in Benue State, Nigeria are poor. A great number of them have lost either their jobs or the strength to work because of ill health. But this is not so for members of Otabo Support Group of People Living with HIV/AIDS, who are running a four-hectare farm in Akpegede village in Otukpo.  The support group not only provides nutritional support but also encourages members to take their medications and adhere to their clinic visits, including covering for each other for farm work when there is a clinic day to attend.

The farmland was donated three years ago to the support group accessing IHVN/PEPFAR HIV medication, care and support at the General Hospital, Otukpo by Chief Ondoko Ocheibi on behalf of his community. The donation was to enable them to feed and care for their members “and to show our appreciation to the Government of United States and the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria which located a treatment support program close to us,” adds Jeff Ondoko, on behalf of his father. “We have seen how HIV has wasted the lives of many people in Akpegede including two of my siblings that we resolved in my family to help the people living with HIV in our community.” He says his late brother and sister were not as fortunate to access free HIV medicines as one of his younger brothers, Elaigwu, who is still alive and serves as the farm manager of the Otabo Support Group.

Aaron Alechenu Ali-Abubakar, 43, is the President of the 200-member support group. “The main crop in our farm is cassava because from it we can get a lot of things to share amongst our members. From this farm, we have garri and cassava to eat; fresh leafs from the cassava stems to make soup because we learnt it contains a lot of iron and vitamins.”

Ali-Abubakar, who began taking HIV drug in 2006 when his CD4 count was 180, says that with the drug, care and support from IHVN/PEPFAR in collaboration with Otabo Care Givers, the non-governmental organization that established the group, “most of us can now live normal lives and even think of going to farm.” With the ARV medication he receives and an adequate diet, his CD4 count has gone up to 650.

Mrs. Christiana Oga who founded and coordinates the Otabo Care Givers – a non-governmental organization that is supported by IHVN/PEPAR to provide home-based care services to clients in Otukpo – says her NGO is expanding opportunities on the farm to include the growing of vegetables, groundnuts, maize, beans and tomatoes. “In fact we are intending to have a piggery in the farm as soon as we receive support from individuals and organizations that can share this burden of providing hope to vulnerable members of our society.” She reveals that because of complaints of lack of money and adequate diet to keep fit, it became desirable to acquire farmland. “We approached the Akpegede community for land and they freely gave us this farm to care [for] their vulnerable folks.” For example, Aladi Inyanda, 30, and her three-year old son would have succumbed to street begging to survive but for the IHVN/PEPFAR collaboration with Otabo Care Givers. Aladi is jobless and the father of her son has ran away because of her HIV status. “But thank God that my son and I receive free HIV drugs from General Hospital, Otukpo and care from Otabo. Look at my son; he has added weight because of the Plumpy Nuts (Donated by Clinton HIV AIDS Initiative – CHAI) I receive here."