According to the Venezuelan Health Observatory, 60% of the school population is undernourished, so this year, 280,000 children could die from malnutrition in the country.

Cáritas Venezuela reported that during 2017, five and six children died weekly due to lack of food and at least 33% had growth retardation.

The high cost of food has caused many parents not to take their children to school because they do not have to feed them and noted that a school lunch box is around 40% of the minimum wage.

A Generation in hunger

Child malnutrition grows every day but the only data we have is that of Caritas that already tells us about 50 to 60% of children with some degree of malnutrition. This is in sentinel centers where children go to seek help, you can not extrapolate so easily to the entire population, but there already 6 out of 10 have some degree of malnutrition is mild, moderate or severe.

And it is incredible how the cases of severe malnutrition in hospitals have increased, going from 2 or 3% that was seen before to almost 15% that is now seen of severe malnutrition that is one of the criteria to establish the humanitarian crisis that You have it at this time. And those who arrive at hospitals are only the tip of an iceberg of those in the community with moderate or mild malnutrition who are living with a risk and possibly get sicker and die before their parents.

Influence on the decrease in life expectancy:

A generation is being affected completely because they are not being provided with the right nutrients, the quality of health care is not appropriate and they are not being supported with the medicines needed to get out of a disease. All this causes the state of health and nutrition to be compromised every day more and therefore tend to become more ill and be more vulnerable to other health events, causing mortality to be at younger ages.

Personal opinion

This is a very sensitive area for me, because I say this? I have a baby for a year and to get food for it is quite complicated, not to say that it is also expensive !, this coupled with policies that do not protect the diet of minors in the country, but with policies that attack the producer system of the country, making it more precarious to obtain what is necessary for the feeding of our children.

@chanchuy