AN­TIGUA–The Gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and a In­ter-Agency Mis­sion of the Unit­ed Na­tions and IICA re­cent­ly launched the Ze­ro Hunger Chal­lenge to elim­i­nate hunger and ex­treme pover­ty with­in two years.

Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Ac­tion Plan be­gan on Feb­ru­ary 20 at a cer­e­mo­ny in the Par­lia­ment's Con­fer­ence Room in St John's. The na­tion­al ini­tia­tive is part of the Ze­ro Hunger Chal­lenge cam­paign launched by Ban-ki Moon, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, dur­ing the Rio+20 Con­fer­ence, stat­ing that, "in a world of abun­dance no­body should go hun­gry."

The Ac­tion Plan was pre­pared joint­ly be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da and an In­ter-Agency Mis­sion com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO), the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion in Agri­cul­ture (IICA), the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), the Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the World Food Pro­gram (WFP).

The Ac­tion Plan was of­fi­cial­ly ac­cept­ed by the prime min­is­ter and the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da in their meet­ing with Jos� Graziano da Sil­va, di­rec­tor gen­er­al of FAO, and Raul Ben­itez, as­sis­tant di­rec­tor gen­er­al and FAO re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean, on oc­ca­sion of the First Meet­ing of Chiefs of State and Gov­ern­ment of CELAC.

"We are tak­ing a bold step to­wards the on­ly lev­el of hunger that is ac­cept­able: ze­ro hunger," said Ben�tez with re­gard to the launch of the joint ini­tia­tive.The ac­tiv­i­ties that will be im­ple­ment­ed and mon­i­tored in­clude home based agri­cul­ture, schools meals, health and nu­tri­tion, food safe­ty and food mar­ket sys­tems.A sys­tem to ad­e­quate­ly and rapid­ly iden­ti­fy vul­ner­a­ble house­holds was agreed up­on and 300 new home gar­dens in poor com­mu­ni­ties will be es­tab­lished with­in the next three months.

In the same time pe­ri­od, a nu­tri­tion­ist and a schools feed­ing pro­gramme spe­cial­ist will eval­u­ate and rec­om­mend im­prove­ments in the Na­tion­al School Meals Pro­gramme, so as to en­sure that all chil­dren from vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies con­sume healthy school meals that pro­vide at least a third of their dai­ly nu­tri­ent re­quire­ments.

Re­cent health da­ta in­di­cates that stunt­ing among chil­dren is a ma­jor chal­lenge to be ad­dressed in the coun­try, since it af­fect five per cent in some of the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties. The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of de­fined ac­tions to im­prove the nu­tri­tion­al sta­tus of these and all chil­dren at risk will al­so start im­me­di­ate­ly, with a fo­cus to re­duce stunt­ing to near­ly ze­ro.

Ac­tions to start the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the al­ready de­fined Food Based Di­etary Guide­lines among vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies will al­so be im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­tak­en."Well fed chil­dren and ze­ro stunt­ing lev­els are two fac­tors that will great­ly ben­e­fit the cur­rent and fu­ture de­vel­op­ment of the is­land. We hope to sup­port them through a wide range of cross sec­tor poli­cies and im­me­di­ate mea­sures," said the FAO re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

A sit­u­a­tion­al as­sess­ment of the food mar­ket sys­tems of the coun­try will be un­der­tak­en, giv­en the chal­lenges of frag­ment­ed and dis­or­gan­ised do­mes­tic food pro­duc­tion, lim­it­ed val­ue added pro­cess­ing, in­ad­e­quate mar­ket­ing in­for­ma­tion/in­tel­li­gence sys­tems and lim­it­ed mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture.It is well recog­nised that with the in­creased con­sump­tion of processed food and im­port­ed foods there is need for ad­e­quate vig­i­lance to en­sure a food sup­ply that guar­an­tees hu­man health, na­tion­al eco­nom­ic well-be­ing, food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty and pover­ty re­duc­tion.The na­tion­al food safe­ty con­trol sys­tem will be im­proved through pri­or­i­ty in­ter­ven­tions. (CMC)