Malnutrition: A gnawing crisis needing urgent action
By AJ Siytangco
Published Apr 16, 2018 10:00 pm
By Atty. Joey D. Lina
Former Senator
Atty. Joey D. Lina
Former Senator The alarming statistical data and exhaustive studies should not be ignored. Extreme hunger and the various forms of malnutrition, including severe undernutrition such as wasting and stunting – mainly due to poverty – form a debilitating crisis in our midst, with its full impact hitting in the years to come. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines good nutrition as the adequate, well-balanced intake of food in relation to the body’s dietary needs. Malnutrition is an encompassing term for the various forms of poor nutrition, whether it is excess consumption of nutrients (overnutrition) usually afflicting the obese, or inadequate consumption of nutrients (undernutrition) common with those suffering from extreme and prolonged hunger. In the Philippines, the bigger problem is undernutrition – the “underlying cause in 45 percent of child deaths worldwide.” According to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in its 2015 Unite for Children report, 95 child deaths in our country everyday are due to undernutrition. When assessed along with the Child Growth Standards set by WHO, child undernutrition has three indicators: underweight (low weight-for-age, including low birth weight), wasting (low weight-for-height), and stunting (low height-for-age). Around 31.2 % of Filipino children aged 5-10 are underweight, according to a 2015 report made by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) which also said that 31.1 % of the children in the same age group are underheight or stunted. The FNRI 2015 data also revealed that among children aged 0-2, around 26.2 % or one in four is undernourished – a rate highest in 10 years. And about 33.5 % of children below the age of five suffer from stunting. It is unfortunate that the Philippines failed in its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of cutting by about half the prevalence of child undernutrition. The MDG target was to reduce, in children under five, the underweight prevalence from about 24 % in 2000 to 13.6 % by 2015, and stunting from 36% to 22%. However, as it turned out in 2015, the figures hardly moved – more than one in five children below five years old were underweight, and more than one-third were stunted. According to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, our country is among those with the highest wasting and stunting prevalence. Of a total of 130 countries ranked lowest to highest on wasting prevalence, the Philippines is ranked 93rd at 7.9 % prevalence. This data on wasting is bothersome amid a published report that, according to the WHO, wasting prevalence that exceeds five percent is “alarming given a parallel increase in mortality that soon becomes apparent. Provided there is no severe food shortage, the prevalence of wasting is usually below five percent, even in poor countries.” On stunting, the Philippines has 30.3 % prevalence and is at 88th spot out of 132 countries also ranked lowest to highest in the 2016 Global Nutrition Report. This is also quite alarming amid the warning from health experts that “chronic undernutrition leads to stunted growth, which is irreversible and is associated with impaired cognitive ability and reduced school performance, as well as poor work capacity and productivity.” An exhaustive 54-country study of maternal and child undernutrition published in 2010 in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and prestigious weekly peer-reviewed general medical journals, “found that height-for-age at two years was the best predictor of human capital, and that undernutrition is associated with lower human capital.” It also stressed that “it is during the child’s first 1000 days when the most pronounced growth reduction is observed compared to other stages in a child’s development.” There’s also a World Bank study that found out that “a one-percent loss in adult height as a result of childhood stunting is linked with a 1.4-percent loss in economic productivity, resulting in 20 percent less earnings as adult.” It added that stunting “is associated with up to 3 percent GDP losses annually.” The non-government organization, Save the Children Philippines, also made an in-depth study in 2016 which revealed that “education and productivity losses as a result of child undernutrition amounted to a total of P328 billion in 2013.” The amount was equivalent to 2.84 % of the Philippines’ GDP that year. The study pointed out that of the 330,418 students who repeated a grade level in 2013, about 15% or 48,597 students “had repeated a grade level as a result of under five stunting. An additional P1.23 billion was required to cover the costs of grade level repetitions for these stunted children.” It said that stunting costs the Philippines some P326.5 billion in lost productivity which is composed of two elements: Reduced productivity among the stunted work force, and the complete loss of productivity due to premature under five child deaths linked to undernutrition. To address undernutrtition among public school students, the Department of Education in 2016 asked schools to establish the Gulayan sa Paaralan Program (GPP) “as a source of ingredients for the School-Based Feeding Program and encourage families of beneficiaries to have their own home garden for the continuous nutritional improvement at home.” The F. Serrano Sr. Elementary School in Parañaque City is among the best to implement GPP. “The school boasts some fruit bearing trees, urban vertical gardening, containerized gardening, aquaponics, circulating and non-circulating hydroponics and fishponds. The non-circulating hydroponics will be seen in every floor of the school building. The school harvests organic vegetables such as pechay, mustard, and eggplants which are used as ingredients for the school’s feeding program,” DepEd said. The successful implementation of GPP in the most impoverished areas of the country will go a long way in battling undernutrition. But a lot more needs to be done. The invaluable help of the private sector and more NGOs will certainly boost efforts to rid the menace plaguing Filipino children. And foremost among these efforts ought to be poverty reduction. Email: [email protected]
Atty. Joey D. LinaFormer Senator The alarming statistical data and exhaustive studies should not be ignored. Extreme hunger and the various forms of malnutrition, including severe undernutrition such as wasting and stunting – mainly due to poverty – form a debilitating crisis in our midst, with its full impact hitting in the years to come. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines good nutrition as the adequate, well-balanced intake of food in relation to the body’s dietary needs. Malnutrition is an encompassing term for the various forms of poor nutrition, whether it is excess consumption of nutrients (overnutrition) usually afflicting the obese, or inadequate consumption of nutrients (undernutrition) common with those suffering from extreme and prolonged hunger. In the Philippines, the bigger problem is undernutrition – the “underlying cause in 45 percent of child deaths worldwide.” According to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in its 2015 Unite for Children report, 95 child deaths in our country everyday are due to undernutrition. When assessed along with the Child Growth Standards set by WHO, child undernutrition has three indicators: underweight (low weight-for-age, including low birth weight), wasting (low weight-for-height), and stunting (low height-for-age). Around 31.2 % of Filipino children aged 5-10 are underweight, according to a 2015 report made by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) which also said that 31.1 % of the children in the same age group are underheight or stunted. The FNRI 2015 data also revealed that among children aged 0-2, around 26.2 % or one in four is undernourished – a rate highest in 10 years. And about 33.5 % of children below the age of five suffer from stunting. It is unfortunate that the Philippines failed in its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of cutting by about half the prevalence of child undernutrition. The MDG target was to reduce, in children under five, the underweight prevalence from about 24 % in 2000 to 13.6 % by 2015, and stunting from 36% to 22%. However, as it turned out in 2015, the figures hardly moved – more than one in five children below five years old were underweight, and more than one-third were stunted. According to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, our country is among those with the highest wasting and stunting prevalence. Of a total of 130 countries ranked lowest to highest on wasting prevalence, the Philippines is ranked 93rd at 7.9 % prevalence. This data on wasting is bothersome amid a published report that, according to the WHO, wasting prevalence that exceeds five percent is “alarming given a parallel increase in mortality that soon becomes apparent. Provided there is no severe food shortage, the prevalence of wasting is usually below five percent, even in poor countries.” On stunting, the Philippines has 30.3 % prevalence and is at 88th spot out of 132 countries also ranked lowest to highest in the 2016 Global Nutrition Report. This is also quite alarming amid the warning from health experts that “chronic undernutrition leads to stunted growth, which is irreversible and is associated with impaired cognitive ability and reduced school performance, as well as poor work capacity and productivity.” An exhaustive 54-country study of maternal and child undernutrition published in 2010 in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and prestigious weekly peer-reviewed general medical journals, “found that height-for-age at two years was the best predictor of human capital, and that undernutrition is associated with lower human capital.” It also stressed that “it is during the child’s first 1000 days when the most pronounced growth reduction is observed compared to other stages in a child’s development.” There’s also a World Bank study that found out that “a one-percent loss in adult height as a result of childhood stunting is linked with a 1.4-percent loss in economic productivity, resulting in 20 percent less earnings as adult.” It added that stunting “is associated with up to 3 percent GDP losses annually.” The non-government organization, Save the Children Philippines, also made an in-depth study in 2016 which revealed that “education and productivity losses as a result of child undernutrition amounted to a total of P328 billion in 2013.” The amount was equivalent to 2.84 % of the Philippines’ GDP that year. The study pointed out that of the 330,418 students who repeated a grade level in 2013, about 15% or 48,597 students “had repeated a grade level as a result of under five stunting. An additional P1.23 billion was required to cover the costs of grade level repetitions for these stunted children.” It said that stunting costs the Philippines some P326.5 billion in lost productivity which is composed of two elements: Reduced productivity among the stunted work force, and the complete loss of productivity due to premature under five child deaths linked to undernutrition. To address undernutrtition among public school students, the Department of Education in 2016 asked schools to establish the Gulayan sa Paaralan Program (GPP) “as a source of ingredients for the School-Based Feeding Program and encourage families of beneficiaries to have their own home garden for the continuous nutritional improvement at home.” The F. Serrano Sr. Elementary School in Parañaque City is among the best to implement GPP. “The school boasts some fruit bearing trees, urban vertical gardening, containerized gardening, aquaponics, circulating and non-circulating hydroponics and fishponds. The non-circulating hydroponics will be seen in every floor of the school building. The school harvests organic vegetables such as pechay, mustard, and eggplants which are used as ingredients for the school’s feeding program,” DepEd said. The successful implementation of GPP in the most impoverished areas of the country will go a long way in battling undernutrition. But a lot more needs to be done. The invaluable help of the private sector and more NGOs will certainly boost efforts to rid the menace plaguing Filipino children. And foremost among these efforts ought to be poverty reduction. Email: [email protected]