In 15% of Uruguayan households there is “moderate or severe food insecurity”, and within that total 2.9% of them suffer from it in a “severe” way, according to the First National Report on the Prevalence of Food Insecurity in Households prepared by the Ministry of Development (Mides), the National Food Institute (INDA), the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) and the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
This means that of a thousand homes, 150 reduced “food consumption at least one day in the last twelve months for economic reasons”according to portfolio research.
Of the households surveyed for the report –which showed some level of affectation–, 21.8% have children under 6 years of age with at least moderate food insecurityand close to one in 25 of those homes has children with serious eating problemsaccording to the report to which he agreed The Observer.
The Minister of Development, Martín Lema, presented the report in the assembly hall of the Executive Tower this Thursday –with the presence of President Luis Lacalle Pou–, and assured that it is the “first representative photo” of food insecurity in the country, which allows “strengthen the efforts” from the Mides for a “greater territorial arrival” to the most affected areas.
The government’s goal, according to Lema, is “improve accessibility to food” through a “structural improvement” based on three axes: “Information, action plan and resources”.
As shown by the report’s map, which reached 7,624 householdsthe departments with the worst percentages of insecurity are located in the north and northeast of the country: Artigas, Cerro Largo, Rivera, Tacuarembo and Treinta y Tres are the five with a percentage more than 16% of households with medium or serious problems to feed themselves.
Most of the problematic cases were located in the first income quintilethe lowest, with a 42.8% prevalence of medium or severe casesand almost one in ten households in a serious situation. More than one in five households in the second quintile and more than one in ten in the third have at least one eating problem moderate.
The numbers differ from those disclosed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)but that have another methodology and according to the authorities are not comparable.
The report of that international organization indicated in September that 23.9% of Uruguayan households suffered from this problem at least moderately from 2019 to 2021. Uruguay was the second best country in this aspect, only behind Chile, which showed a percentage of 17.4%.
“We take it very sparingly.where there is only one Uruguayan who may be at risk of food insecurity, they have to have us with the guard high to make maximum efforts and that no kind of unwanted situation happens,” Lema said in this regard at a press conference held on September 21, recorded by Telemundo (Channel 12).
This Thursday the minister clarified that “Although it is not comparable” the survey carried out by the State with the one carried out by the FAObecause the one organized by the UN surveyed a thousand people, the method for this latest report it was “much more rigorous”.
