385,000 go hungry in midst of food scams

ALTHOUGH Panama’s GDP has grown steadily since 1990, nearly 10 percent of the population, some 385,000, are undernourished though the country reached the Millennium Development Goal related to halving the proportion of hungry people, between 1990 and 2015.

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO,) entitled “The State of Food Security 2015”, says that in 25 years undernourishment (inadequate supply) in the country rose from 26.4% to 9.5%.

However, the document notes that the 9.5% still hungryis concentrated in the indigenous regions and rural areas.

The report comes in the midst of orruption investigations related to scores of millions of  dollars stolen from the state through scams related to food for the poor.
According to the FAO report, the international crisis did not affect Panama, as the country has always shown positive growth rates of gross domestic product from 1990 to the present.
This trend of economic growth, says international agency, has helped “substantially” in reducing poverty figures.
For example, it states that at the beginning of 2000 almost 37% of the Panamanian population lived in poverty, and more than 19% in extreme poverty. However, in 2013 both rates have declined by 13.7 and 7.2 percentage points respectively, down poverty to 23.2% of the population and extreme poverty, 12.2%.
For FAO experts, the evolution of these indicators in recent years reveals a “sustained poverty reduction.”
While on the topic of extreme poverty, stress that although diminished, also presents setbacks in some years, coinciding with increases in international food prices.
A point that highlights this is that for the aid must be met related to health and education of infants commitments.
According to FAO, with these positive results, the country has challenges to consolidate gains relating to food and nutrition security.
One of the most important is for chronic malnutrition, as the pace of its reduction has been low throughout the country.
For this purpose, activation of the National Plan to Combat Child Malnutrition 2008-2015, which seeks to increase the health coverage of pregnant and children under 3 years is recommended; increase the percentage of mothers who give exclusive breastfeeding up to six months; provide supplementary feeding for children from 6 months of age; and reduce the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies in children under 3 years.
Minister of Social Development, Alcibiades Vasquez, said that the government is seeking to halve the number of hungry people, bringing 385, 000 to less than 200,000. He said that purchase food in the poorest communities had not been met by the previous administration which left unfulfilled food bonds of $9 million.
Therefore, he said, already they caught up with the debt and intend to bring the program to other indigenous and rural communities.
He said they are aware that a few minutes from the city there are places where there is poverty and extreme poverty, so that their policies will be targeted to your attention.
“Besides all will try to improve the management of economic transfers provided by the state as Opportunities Network and 120 at 65, so that the aid reaches those who really need it,” he said.
Former director of the National Secretariat for Food, Teresita de Arias said that in a country like Panama it was not “justified” that many people have feeding problems. g.
She said that at this point no one should be facing malnutition problems in rural and indigenous areas.
For Arias, there was an oversight in recent years in the implementation of programs such as food vouchers, nutritional cream in health centers benefiting mothers and infants and food for students in the most remote schools.
Eating poorly during the early years affects the normal development of children,” she said.
Chaverri Roderick, director of the National Network of Support for Children and Adolescents, said that we need a rescue strategy for children, especially in remote regions without access to good nutrition. “Only election campaigns show concern about the children, but then the issue goes to the background,”