Haiti commits to reducing the prevalence of chronic malnutrition by 25% by 2030 and by 50% the prevalence of severe acute malnutrition in children under 5 years old

The Republic of Haiti, due to its geographical position, is exposed to climatic hazards that affect its agricultural production, and the resulting food insecurity represents one of the major determinants of a poor nutritional situation. Acute and chronic malnutrition: stunting, wasting, micronutrient deficiencies affect children during the window of opportunity. Thus, malnourished pregnant women give birth to low birth weight children with intrauterine malnutrition affecting their brain development resulting in a vicious intergenerational cycle of poverty in adulthood with a decline in per capita income and gross domestic product.

The satisfactory results obtained with innovative community strategies (mobile PTA, maternal PB), scientific evidence such as the simplified protocol for the management of acute malnutrition and the international guidelines or guidance notes on the management of acute malnutrition in the context of COVID-19 require a revision of the PCMAG Protocol to facilitate a greater increase in coverage, a reduction in the dropout rate and better adherence of beneficiaries.

It should be mentioned that factors such as: inflation (increase of about 29% in the value of the food basket in June 2020), repeated socio-political crises, devaluation of the gourde, reduction of remittances, deterioration of the agricultural situation following the El Niño phenomenon and natural disasters (tropical storm Laura), have largely affected the purchasing power of the poorest households and their ability to access food, forcing them to adopt unsustainable livelihood strategies as a result.

According to the Food Security Coordination, the number of food insecure people is increasing almost constantly from 600,000 (in 2013) to more than 1.6 million in 2015 and 4.4 million in October 2019 and 3 million in August 2020, i.e. (43% and 46% of the population analysed) are chronically moderately food insecure (level 3) or chronically severely food insecure (level 4).

All this has led to a deterioration in the nutritional status of the target nutrition groups, justifying the need to have recent data on the nutritional situation of children and women in order to intervene more effectively, weakened by COVID-19 and its collateral effects, especially at the community level where nutrition services have slowed down.