At the end of last month Luis Monterroso, head of the secretariat for food security (Sesan), warned that at least 40,800 families could be affected by food shortages this year. This adds to the current crisis affecting the agricultural sector caused by a coffee fungus (see sidebar). Monterroso said the government had earmarked Q$715m (US$92.3m) for a preventative plan for the sector which includes: support to agricultural households; the prevention and treatment of malnutrition through the use of therapeutic foods; the establishment of a nutritional alert system among other measures. Monterroso did not say whether the latest threat of food crisis would affect President Pérez Molina’s pledge to reduce malnutrition by 10% during his four year term which began in January 2012. In his two-year balance sheet delivered in January 2014, Pérez Molina claimed that through his government’s main flagship social programme, Hambre Cero (Zero Hunger), the rate of deaths as a result of malnutrition dropped to 0.68% down from 2.2%. He also said that 106 children died in 2013 as a result of malnutrition, 28% less than in 2012.
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