Cuba: Zero Percent of Severe Child Malnutrition, points out the UN

The United Nations Children´s Fund (UNICEF) affirms that Cuba is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean that has eliminated severe child malnutrition, thanks to its government’s efforts.

UNICEF praised Cuban work against malnutrition.

In a document published by cubadebate.cu on Monday, UNICEF points out that today there are some 146 million children under 5 years of age in a state of impoverishment in the developing world, which contrasts with the reality of Cuban children.

In this regard, the report shows that the percentages of children underweight are the following: 28 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 17 in the Middle East and North Africa, 15 in East Asia and the Pacific, and 7 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The list is completed by Central and Eastern Europe, with five percent, and other developing nations with 27 percent.

Cuba, however, doesn´t have problems of severe child malnutrition, due to the efforts of the Cuban state to improve the people´s diet, especially that of the most vulnerable groups.

The Cuban government guarantees a basic family shopping basket that allows for the nutrition of the population at least in the basic levels, by way of the network of distribution of regulated products, points out cubadebate.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has also acknowledged that Cuba is the nation with more advances in Latin America in the struggle against malnutrition.

Likewise, economic adjustments are being made in other markets and local services to improve the Cuban people´s diet and ease the food deficit. Permanent attention is given to the sustenance of boys, girls and adolescents, adds the report.

Cubadebate adds that the island is not exempted from deficiencies, difficulties and serious limitations, mainly due to the economic commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on the island for almost five decades now.

See the full UNICEF report here...