Malnutrition In Honduras

Honduras is the second poorest country in Central America. Due to this severe poverty there is a large issue with nutrition, especially in the rural areas of the country. In recent years, the statistics have gotten better; however, there are still plenty of families that struggle with stunting, wasting, and underweight issues. The issues effect children in the families most of all. There are 7% of children under 5 that are underweight, 22.7% are stunting, 1.4% are wasting. Resulting in more than half of the deaths of children under five being attributed to malnutrition. This shows the severe struggle that has developed in this country regarding children. The reason for some of the malnutrition is due to the poor quality of food, specifically

Nearly 22% of pregnant women struggle from anemia. The reason for much of the lack of quality nutrients is due to food insecurity and food shortage for much of the country. However, there are opportunities that are helping to get things back into order. Families are starting to reserve food and there are several organizations like AIN-C and Feed the Children. Together we must increase the quality food and have enough food for the women and children to get the nutrients that they need. The condition of nutrition in Honduras is lower than it has ever been. The chronic malnutrition in Honduras is even higher than in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Living in poverty has a disastrous impact on both the human and economic growth, contributing to keeping Honduras in poverty. This has a huge impact on the families in Honduras. With high food

The beginning needs to start with finding quality sources of food that are more affordable for families in poverty, as well as, finding areas to grow the quality food needed to supply the country. The easy solution would be to ship food into the country, however, this can get incredibly costly for developing countries. Most of the commercial farmers in Honduras produce foods like bananas, plantains, rice, maize, and beans. While, these can be good sources of food, they are what is known as low-profit crops. The more higher profit crops are things like herbs, bamboo, and lavender. The issue with trying to grow these crops in Honduras is the fact that the climate does not allow for growth of these types of crops. This realization means that growing higher profit crops in Honduras to try to increase the economic growth is not an option. Therefore, the Hondurans must try to adjust by growing things like carrots, grains, and other products to try to help balance out the nutrients that are lacking rather than giving money to ship in the expensive quality food. If they are able to have some economic support to grow different crops, then it may decrease the Vitamin A deficiency, as well as, other deficiencies. By putting more money into the higher quality foods there will be an increase in nutritional