DR and malnutrition

[NewsWhore]

The United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has called child malnutrition a "moral issue" and a "critical economic concern." Ban Ki-moon spoke at the launch of the report "The Cost of Hunger: Economic and Social Impact of Child Malnutrition in Central America and the Dominican Republic." The report was prepared by the UN's World Food Program and the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC, or CEPAL in Spanish), and says that 14% of children in the region suffer from malnutrition. The report says that this costs the region US$6.7 billion or 6.4% of GDP. Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras were the most critical countries, and the Dominican Republic was situated in the middle of the group, below Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The study traces six decades of nutritional history. The new study has found that child undernutrition in Central America and the Dominican Republic in 2004 alone cost those economies US$6.7 billion - or 6.4 percent of the region's entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - a burden that severely undermines international and national efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty.
"This study is a wake up call to the international community that widespread child hunger is not only a moral and humanitarian issue, but has economic consequences as well," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran.
See http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=... (http://www.eclac.org/cgi-bin/getProd.asp?xml=/prensa/noticias/comunicados/9/28749/P28749.xml&xsl=/prensa/tpl-i/p6f.xsl&base=/tpl-i/top-bottom.xsl)

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