Senator Loren Legarda on Wednesday, July 22 called for stronger coordination among national government agencies, local government agencies, schools, communities and the private sector to address child stunting and malnutrition in order to ensure that the country’s education reform programs would bear fruit. 

Legarda, a long-time advocate of nutrition, health and education, made the call in light of recent studies showing that stunting among children under five rose from 23.6% to 25.3%, or about one in every four Filipino children, marking the first increase in the country’s stunting rate in a decade. 

The senator warned that no education reform can fully succeed while Filipino children continue to suffer from chronic malnutrition during their earliest years.

"When we discuss the education crisis, we often immediately think of classrooms, teachers, and textbooks. However, the first barrier to learning may arise even before a child enters school,” Legarda said. 

“If a child grows up malnourished, it is not just their physical growth that is affected; their ability to learn, comprehend, dream, and rise above their circumstances is also jeopardized,” she pointed out. 

She mentioned the First 1,000 Days Law, which seeks to ensure that the first 1,000 days of a child's life, from pregnancy until the age of two, lay the foundation for lifelong learning and development. 

"If we fail to place sufficient value on this period, it becomes much harder to reclaim lost opportunities. The fight against stunting is a fight for the future of every Filipino child," Legarda stressed.

Latest findings from the Department of Science and Technology's Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI), highlighted by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM II), show that nearly one in every four Filipino children under five is stunted, a 1.7-percentage-point jump from 2023 that reverses a downward trend that had held since 2015. 

Health experts say stunting, caused by chronic undernutrition, has lasting effects on a child's physical growth, brain development, learning capacity, and future productivity.

Data also reveal how uneven the crisis is across the country with stunting rates higher in rural areas at 27.8 % compared to 23.2 % in urban areas, with the heaviest burden falling on the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) at 36 %, the Zamboanga Peninsula at 34.6 %, the Negros Island Region at 30.9 %, and MIMAROPA at 30.3 %. 

Legarda noted that these numbers point to families in the most underserved and remote parts of the country carrying the heaviest weight of the crisis, and that any response has to reach them first.

The senator also pointed out that the damage does not end at age five. DOST-FNRI also found that stunting persists in 18.9 % of school-age children between 5 and 10 years old, and in 21.4 % of adolescents aged 10 to 19, meaning many children carry the effects of early malnutrition through their entire basic education.

Legarda emphasized that the country's efforts to address learning poverty must begin with ensuring that children receive adequate nutrition from the earliest stages of life.

“Hunger and a lack of proper nutrition should not be the first obstacles a Filipino child faces. These should not dictate their future," the lawmaker stressed.