EVALUATION OF THE NUMBER OF DEATHS FROM MALNUTRITION IN SOUTH AMERICA IN THE PERIOD 1997 TO 2012

Background and objectives: Background: Hunger is one of the main references in world politics, however thousands of people die every year because of the food starvation, South America is a reference of great availability and variety of foods, but it is no stranger to deaths from malnutrition. Objective: To evaluate the number of deaths from malnutrition in South America in the period 1997 to 2012. Methods: Materials and methods: We used the database reported by the Pan America Health Organization (PAHO) which was accessed in March 2017 and complemented with databases of food availability and GDP from the FAOSTAT. The GENERAL LINEAR MODEL was used in order to carry out the contrasts between countries of South America incorporating the Tukey test, based on a statistical significance level of 5% Additionally the multivariate Biplot technique was carried out, which aims to relate the different years evaluated by projecting the countries and was complemented with cluster analysis, to establish typologies or groups according with the dynamics of the variables. We used statistical packages SAS UNIVERSITY and R version 3.0.0. Results: The highest number of deaths occur in child under one year, from one to four years and from 65 years of age. Brazil is the country of South America where more deaths from malnutrition presented, followed by Colombia and Argentina. The countries in which are presented under statistics of deaths from malnutrition are Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Chile. Conclusions: Notwithstanding that the countries of South America have great availability of foods, the deaths from malnutrition are still prevalent in most of the continent.