The chronic child malnutrition rate is 27.2%, according to UNICEF figures, which has worsened to 36% according to statements by the President of the Republic, warned legislator Lucía Placencia, coordinator of the Parliamentary Group Ecuador without Hunger .
This situation has not only affected the accessibility and availability of food, but has negatively affected rights such as work and fair conditions favorable to health and social protection, she deplored.
“It is time to guarantee the prosperity of the communities and champion the cause to quickly lead the realization of the right to universal, accessible and comprehensive food,” she said.
The representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Ecuador (FAO), Agustín Zimmermann, warned that Ecuador registers the second highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the region; 1 in 4 children under the age of five suffers from chronic childhood malnutrition, while 6 in 10 adults are overweight or obese, as a result of the agri-food system, so a radical transformation must be made to the food system.
According to Alicia Guevara, director of the Quito Food Bank, a third of the food produced in the world is wasted. “The problem of hunger is not due to the lack of food, but it is a social problem that is being solved through food banks,” she said. She questioned that food is wasted despite the fact that billions of people suffer from hunger in the world.
He prevented Ecuador from being on the list of Latin American countries that waste the most food, He pointed out that, according to FAO 2019, in the first links of the food chain a year 939,000 tons of food suitable for human consumption are wasted.
For Assemblyman Ramiro Narváez, these are the causes that should unite us, renounce any difference and work together, because the figures should cause alarm, they should not let us sleep peacefully. What happens worldwide and is reflected in Ecuador merits urgent changes.
“A country where 33% of its children suffer from chronic malnutrition, where inequalities are evident with regard to food, should not give us peace,” he emphasized.
Legislator Isabel Enríquez said that this Group was created with the objective of promoting the right to food in Ecuador. “We must improve programs and policies to banish malnutrition,” she reflected.
At the discretion of Ronal González, it is time to focus on fighting anemia. He warned that while people starve, milk is wasted, corn, quinoa, beans rot, protein-rich foods that cannot be marketed in large cities, due to the speculative market that pays little to farmers.
Rodrigo Fajardo argued that chronic malnutrition has repercussions on the reality of Ecuadorians. “We must focus on the multiple causes: water quality, access to vaccines, food,” he proposed.
The Parliamentary Group Ecuador without Hunger presented, before civil society organizations, representatives of the academy and researchers, the work developed in its first 50 days of administration, as a space to eradicate adult and child malnutrition.
He raised as fundamental goals to develop new proposals that are dynamic for the implementation of sustainable food systems and provide solutions to food insecurity and malnutrition.
In Placencia’s opinion, sustainable food systems, productive traceability and economic growth in rural areas are issues that will allow prioritizing actions to protect the well-being of all.
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