The impact of the HIV pandemic on children has been documented extensively. Roughly 17.1
million (15.4 million to 19.1 million) children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents to
AIDS, and millions more have been affected, with a vastly increased risk of poverty, homelessness,
school dropout, discrimination, and loss of life opportunities. These hardships include pediatric HIV
infection, illness, and death. Of the estimated 1.8 million (1.6 million to 1.9 million) people who died
of AIDS-related illnesses in 2010, 250,000 (220,000 to 290,000) of them were children under 15
years old (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF] 2011).
The purpose of this document is to provide an introduction to programming food security and
nutrition (FSN) interventions for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). It is written for
development practitioners who have previous experience with OVC programming in an HIV
context but do not necessarily have FSN-related experience.