According to a recent report United Nations has shed light on the current battle against hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023 report, mentioned that about 6.5 per cent of the population in this county continues to suffer with hunger, amounting to roughly about 43.2 million people.
While this amount represents a modest improvement of 0.5 percentage points compared to previous measurements, the report highlights that the prevalence of hunger remains 0.9 percentage points higher than the 2019 figures which was recorded before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Director, Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, was worried about the growing challenge posed by overweight and obesity, which have been the cause for about 2.8 million deaths from noncommunicable diseases in 2021.
The report also mentioned that certain countries have a hard time because of the high prevalence of stunting among children under the age of five. At the regional level, this amount stands at a troubling 11.5 per cent.
Even though significant progress has been made since 2000, the pace of decline has reduced within the last few years. The prevalence reduced by nearly about five percentage points between 2000 and 2012, but the drop was a mere 1.2 percentage points between 2012 and 2022.
UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America Garry Conille and the Caribbean, highlighted that child malnutrition, in its several forms, continues to impact children and adolescents throughout the county.
He stressed that child overweight and undernutrition are intertwined challenges which demands a comprehensive method.
In 2022 the food security and nutrition situation remained grim and the report finds that about 29.6 percent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion individuals, did not have continuous access to food, as measured by the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Among them, around 900 million people faced severe food insecurity.
In the meantime, the capacity of individuals to access healthy diets has declined across the world: more than 3.1 billion individuals in the world – or 42 percent – were unable to afford a healthy diet in 2021. This represents an overall increase of 134 million individuals compared to 2019.
Millions of children under five continue to suffer from malnutrition: in 2022, 45 million children under five years of age (6.8 percent) were wasted, 37 million (5.6 percent) were overweight and 148 million (22.3 percent) were stunted.
In exclusive breastfeeding results has been seen with 48 percent of children under 6-months of age gaining from this practice, close to the 2025 target. However, more efforts will be needed to meet the 2030 malnutrition targets.
