Latin America's Mesoamerican region, which is home to Mexico, Central American countries, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, needs to redouble its efforts to meet the United Nations Zero Hunger Challenge, said a report released on Wednesday.

While the region has reduced the number of people suffering malnutrition from 15.7 million in 1990 to 12.7 million in 2016, there is still work to be done to eradicate hunger by the UN-set deadline of 2025. "Mesoamerica's Nutritional and Food Security Outlook," published by the regional office of UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Santiago, Chile, acknowledged the positive effects of public policies to reduce hunger, but noted that regional countries, with the exception of Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico, have high rates of hunger, sometimes twice the average rate for Latin America.

Costa Rica, Cuba and Mexico have cut malnutrition to less than 5 percent of their populations, according to the FAO.

The problem is worrying in Central America's "dry corridor", which covers Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, home to 10.5 million inhabitants, 60 percent of them living in poverty, the report said.

To combat hunger and malnutrition, the region needs to improve coordination between government agencies and nongovernmental organizations, strengthen monitoring and information gathering systems to properly gauge the effectiveness of programs, and provide the needed funding, the report recommends.

The FAO also highlighted key regional initiatives, such as those in Costa Rica and the Mexican capital Mexico City aimed at food and nutritional security.

Zero Hunger Challenge campaign was proposed by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012, focusing on 100 percent access to food for all and all year round.

source: Xinhua