Achieving the Zero Hunger Pact in Guatemala: Calculating the cost to provide preventive maternal and child nutrition services to reduce stunting

Background/Objectives:  Guatemala’s Zero Hunger Pact lays out a vision to significantly reduce pervasive childhood stunting which impacts national development goals. In 2013-2014, we estimated the cost of scaling up comprehensive preventive maternal and child nutrition services to achieve this vision.

Methods: The activity-based costing (ABC) methodology was used to estimate the cost of scaling-up MOH nutrition services. Nutrition-specific and –sensitive interventions were costed by geographic department and service delivery type. Primary data was collected to determine staff time allocated to each nutrition intervention, required supplies and other inputs.  Resulting unit costs were aggregated to estimate 2012 costs as a base year and projections were estimated assuming expanded coverage through 2021.  

Results: The ABC methodology permitted the costs for needed nutrition services to be compared with estimated budgets. Results indicate that significantly more resources are required to expand nutrition services compared to current plans and 77% of total nutrition funding should be allocated to nutrition-specific services.

Conclusions: Costing nutrition services allows governments to recognize the financial commitment needed to address stunting and for human and financial resources to be invested accordingly. Results indicate that nutrition as a sector is currently underfunded relative to national objectives. Greater investment in scaling up maternal and child nutrition services is imperative to achieve national objectives.