New analysis of acute food insecurity and the effect caused by COVID-19 in Honduras

Honduras plans to carry out a new analysis of acute food insecurity and the effect caused by COVID-19 on the urban and rural population in October 2020

© UNICEF/UN0217838/Bindra

The government of Honduras, through the Technical Unit for Food and Nutrition Security (UTSAN), asked the General Secretariat of the Central American Integration System (SG-SICA) to carry out a new virtual analysis of the acute food insecurity in the urban and rural population located in 15 of 18 departments of that country, under the approach of the Integrated Classification of Food Security in Phases (CIF) with international protocols.

As part of the process prior to a new analysis, a coordination meeting was held between the technical teams of UTSAN and the Program of Information Systems for Resilience in Food and Nutrition Security of the SICA Region (PROGRESAN-SICA II), in order to define the procedures and articulate the actions to be taken in the process of collecting and verifying the quality of information to be used. The selected modality will be strictly virtual and by telephone, using contact networks and call centers, if applicable.

In the work session, coordinated by the Director of UTSAN, Ing. José Lino Pacheco and the Director of PROGRESAN-SICA II Licda. Patricia Palma de Fulladolsa, explained that this first phase will have the support of the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other national entities to collect the data. .

In June 2020, an update of the Projected Situation of the CIF was carried out with the Acute Food Insecurity Scale, in order to have new information based on the current reality generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, whose first case was reported on March 10, 2020 in Honduras.

The CIF is a set of protocols that allow classifying the severity and identifying the causes of food and nutritional insecurity, as well as providing supportive knowledge through the consolidation of information of various kinds. It is a process that helps generate technical consensus among key stakeholders.

PROGRESAN-SICA II is a program of the General Secretariat of the Central American Integration System (SG-SICA) and has funding from the European Union and the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Global Initiative of the CIF, FAO, among others.