Ecuador is the third country with the most hunger in South America

Guayaquil.- Ecuador is the third country with the most hunger among the nations of South America, only behind Bolivia and Trinidad and Tobago, according to data from the Global Hunger Index (GHI 2025) presented by the organization Ayuda en Acción. With a score of 10.9 out of 100, which places it in the "moderate" category, the Andean country ranks tenth out of twelve within the group of South American countries included in the report, and 58th among the 136 countries analyzed worldwide. The neighbors of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia are much better positioned with 7.2 and 6.1 points, respectively. Uruguay and Chile lead the ranking of countries with the least hunger in South America with scores that are below five units. Ayuda en Acción also pointed out that Ecuador registers a 17.7% delay in child growth, according to 2024 data, and a 1.3% infant mortality rate, according to the latest available statistics. In addition, undernutrition reaches 12.1%. "These data show that chronic malnutrition remains a significant challenge in Ecuador, especially in girls and boys," the organization noted in a statement.

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Ecuador has been working in recent years with greater force in the fight against chronic childhood malnutrition, a topic that was championed at the time by former President Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), and which is now being led by the country's vice president, María José Pinto. Ayuda en Acción, which has been fighting poverty and inequality in rural areas of Ecuador for over thirty years, also indicated that in the country two out of every ten people live in poverty, which represents more than four million people living on less than three dollars a day, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC). Rural areas are the most affected, as in them four out of ten people live in poverty, with incomes much lower than the basic family basket which currently costs 819 dollars.