Honduras: Not so sweet

A group of researchers working with the non-profit "Shoulder to Shoulder" are assessing malnutrition in the area by providing plumpy doz, a peanut butter paste, to local children as a food supplement. Funded by the Mathile Institute, the six-month project reaches out to more than 300 mothers and their young infants in local communities in an effort to prevent malnutrition. Researchers are calculating each child's height, weight, and age and comparing this data to a pre-determined mean, also known as a z-score. They then track changes in the z-score of each child throughout the six months to assess the benefit of plumpy doz.Peggy Bentley, Associate Dean for Global Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, serves as one of the nutrition investigators for the project. Bentley is here for a week overseeing the project and inspecting the data sets. "Stunting is chronic malnutrition and that’s what the profile is all
throughout Latin and South America," Bentley said. "In this part of the world in Honduras we see rates of stunting that are 50-60% of the population and sometimes even more than that."**
Dr. Jeffery Heck, founder and executive director of "Shoulder to Shoulder," noted that Honduras is the third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with a malnutrition rate of 17%. "However, poverty and malnutrition rates are thought to be as high as twice the national average in the rural remote areas of western Honduras," Heck wrote.  **Updated 6/29/09Learn more about Tracy's project Honduras: Fighting Malnutrition 'Shoulder to Shoulder' See Tracy's other dispatches