Source:
The Times of IndiaPotential nutritional crisis to strike Central America: UNWFP
27 Feb 2008, 1148 hrs IST,PTI
NEW YORK: The United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) has warned of a potential nutritional crisis in Central America, where the prices of wheat and corn have nearly doubled in the past year and bad weather has pushed the price of beans to unprecedented levels.
The agency notes that the surge has meant that the actual calorie intake of an average meal in rural El Salvador, for example, is today roughly 60 per cent of what it was in May 2006.
"At this stage, it is still premature to provide figures, but we fear a deepening nutritional crisis among the poorest segments of the population, those already food and nutritionally insecure," WFP El Salvador Country Director Carlo Scaramella, who is coordinating a study of the impact of recent rising prices in the region, said.
"At the same time, what we are seeing is the emergence of a new group of nutritionally and food-insecure people among the poorest strata of the population," he added.
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