Article published in Trade, Monday May 24, 2010
By Eduardo Zegarra
The INEI recently presented the results of the DHS, demographic and health survey household, in 2009. The survey records that in 2009 23.8% have children under age 5 with chronic malnutrition rate is 27.5% lower than 2008. This is good news for the country, but should be considered that there is an inertial tendency to fall in this indicator by the decline in the fertility rate of women (especially rural), and the fact that children between 4 and 5 years of the previous year (2008) out of the cohort of measurement, and enter those between 0 and 1 year, less prone to malnutrition. Not measure malnutrition in children between 5 and 9 years is a serious gap in the national statistics, which should be remedied as soon as possible. But the results are not to celebrate. In today's Peru 45% of children in the poorest quintile are chronically malnourished, and 30% of women in the second quintile. With these figures is even unlikely that Peru will soon go very high levels of social backwardness, less claim to the same results as those obtained by neighboring countries such as Chile and Costa Rica in the region.
The main concern about this is that the Government still lacks a food security policy that protects the most vulnerable. While it is true that the authorities can show some success in macroeconomic management of the financial crisis of 2009, should recognize serious problems to advance important social indicators such as those linked to food. It is crucial that politicians put the power of the population in the first item on the agenda, which should be key issue in the upcoming municipal elections, regional and national. One of the keys is to reform the food programs such as the Vaso de Leche, a vast network of mothers organized around food that has not had much impact on nutritional children.
This valuable program must be leaving the approach to deliver rations expensive, inadequate and poor quality food to children, to move to the use of family bonds aimed at eliminating household food insecurity. Instruments of this type have been much more effective in improving feeding people in rural Mexico (Progresa) and in Brazil (Bolsa Familia). It is also important to establish a food reserve in the national budget to meet the increasingly predictable price shock or short-term food supply problems, such as the recent sugar, where the government ended in disorder directing the limited resources of the Agrarian Bank (A bank is supposed to farmers) to three importers of sugar, not exactly an example of good governance. Hopefully 2010 will not be another bad year for the feeding of the 2011 Peruvian and have better proposals and effective results in food and nutrition.
The main concern about this is that the Government still lacks a food security policy that protects the most vulnerable. While it is true that the authorities can show some success in macroeconomic management of the financial crisis of 2009, should recognize serious problems to advance important social indicators such as those linked to food. It is crucial that politicians put the power of the population in the first item on the agenda, which should be key issue in the upcoming municipal elections, regional and national. One of the keys is to reform the food programs such as the Vaso de Leche, a vast network of mothers organized around food that has not had much impact on nutritional children.
This valuable program must be leaving the approach to deliver rations expensive, inadequate and poor quality food to children, to move to the use of family bonds aimed at eliminating household food insecurity. Instruments of this type have been much more effective in improving feeding people in rural Mexico (Progresa) and in Brazil (Bolsa Familia). It is also important to establish a food reserve in the national budget to meet the increasingly predictable price shock or short-term food supply problems, such as the recent sugar, where the government ended in disorder directing the limited resources of the Agrarian Bank (A bank is supposed to farmers) to three importers of sugar, not exactly an example of good governance. Hopefully 2010 will not be another bad year for the feeding of the 2011 Peruvian and have better proposals and effective results in food and nutrition.
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