Honduras battling child malnutrition

Honduras is addressing the serious issue of malnutrition in children.

Tomalá is in Lempira in western Honduras, which has the highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the country and well above average for Latin America. The region is also experiencing increased and longer-lasting droughts from rising temperatures, making it harder for people to grow and sell crops to feed their families.

Child malnutrition is a complex issue rooted in social, economic and environmental factors. “The challenge for us as a community is to join forces,” said Dr Teresa de Jesus, who works at a health centre. “Focusing only on health will not work, family income and housing conditions also limit a child’s development and increase the risk for undernourishment.”

To support families, Honduras is partnering with the UN to design integrated development solutions that tackle the many issues which contribute to malnutrition, boosting progress across the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNDP provides a key contribution with the ‘SDG Combo’ — that address all aspects of a multi-dimensional development challenge like child malnutrition.

Ground-breaking ways of collecting and combining data underpin this work. Feedback from people on services, data from NGOs, satellite data and the so-called geo-referenced administrative registries that collect hundreds of exclusion indicators to help map the needs of millions of people.