EFFECTS OF HIV/AIDS ON THE LIVELIHOODS OF RURAL FARMERS IN ENUGU STATE, NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS related problems have continued to be major problems for human welfare.
The study was set to evaluate the impact of HIV/AIDS on livelihood of rural farmers of
Enugu State which has HIV prevalence of 5.2 with about 51,639 persons infected. The study
specifically sought to: describe socio economic characteristic of people living with
HIV/AIDS, describe the major HIV/AIDS related problems in the rural areas, describe
people living with HIV/AIDS' access/responses to sources of helps to cope with their health
status, determine people living with HIV/AIDS' access to farm assets such farm size, labour,
and estimate determinants of technical efficiency of HIV/AIDS infected households. A total
of 54 HIV/AIDS affected households were selected. Data were collected through the use of
structured questionnaires. Data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics, Principal
Component Analysis, Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Lest Significant Difference (LSD)
as well as Coelli 4.0 maximum likelihood estimation techniques. Results showed that fifty
six percent of the respondents were females while forty four were males. The distribution by
age shows that majority of the patients were between 16-38 years. Access to free drugs and
medication was very limited in the study area. Results show that only 16 percent of
respondents always had access to free medication while the majority (63%) did not. Free
medication is necessary in view of the high cost of drugs and numerous diseases associated
with HIV.
Twenty-seven percent of the respondents often received help from NGOs while 55
percent did not often receive such help. Principal component analysis showed that HIV
infected households were responding most to family helps and also to nutrition and free
medication as well as financial help. The LSD test showed that HIV reduces the mean scores
of the selected farm assets namely farm size, family labour, hired labour and income. The
Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLE) estimate showed that variance-ratio parameter γ*
was 0.5659. It implied that 56.59 percent of the differences between observed and the
maximum frontier output for the farmers was due to the existing differences in efficiency
levels among them. The estimated value of gamma was 0.782 for all the farmers. Its t-value
was 2.636. The statistical significance of this value at 5 percent level implied that all the
farmers were grossly inefficient in agricultural production. It showed that productivity is
positively related to Land Area (farm size), Family labour, Hired labour and quantity of
fertilizer. It was recommended among others that Champaign against HIV should be directed
more to young people who are the most infected in order to increase the number of youths
actively involved in farming.
