Nutrition council eyes 2 % drop in Region 7 malnutrition rate

Buoyed by nutrition surveys that showed a decline in the prevalence of malnutrition among preschoolers in Central Visayas, the Regional Nutrition Council targets another two percent decrease in malnutrition rate by the end of this year.

Based on nutrition surveys, prevalence of malnutrition among preschool children in the region decreased from 11.73 percent in 2005 to 9.78 percent of last year.

The Food for School Program initiated by the government through the Department of Social Welfare and Development is aimed at improving health status of preschoolers in areas considered as poorly vulnerable.

DSWD-7 FSP coordinator Mayette Palloso said the FSP, a hunger-mitigation program, is implemented in 19 towns in Bohol classified as fifth-class municipalities with 8,015 targeted schoolchildren-beneficiaries.

The FSP, first introduced as an actual feeding program for 60 schooldays in the first quarter of last year, specified 16 towns for implementation in all four provinces in the region.

Three town-beneficiaries were identified in Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor and seven municipalities in Oriental Negros. For Cebu, the said towns were Badian, Sibonga and Tabogon, Palloso bared.

For the program's second phase, the FSP was launched sometime second quarter in 2006 that provided one kilo of rice everyday to each child enrolled in daycare centers and schools good for 40 days. The 16 towns that were identified for the actual feeding program were also the target beneficiaries that benefited 9,756 preschoolers, this was learned.

But the next distribution of rice/daily to schoolchildren-beneficiaries, sometime September last year for 23 days, had only Bohol as the provincial beneficiary with 19 fifth-class towns declared as vulnerable and benefiting slightly over 8,000 preschoolers, according to Palloso.

Though only Bohol has benefited from the FSP for the last quarter of 2006, this does not mean that nutrition-related feeding programs in the said towns of Cebu, Siquijor and Oriental Negros have ceased, Palloso said.

Local government units have sustained the nutrition-related programs with funds taken from their respective Early Childhood Care Development program.

Palloso said Bohol had the most number of fifth-class municipalities while only one has been identified in Oriental Negros and none in Cebu and Siquijor. For Oriental Negros, the DepEd-7 has covered the sole fifth-class town in its similar nutrition-feeding program.

A P3.6-million budget for the FSP has been allotted last year, while Palloso said she expects the budget to increase this year with more schoolchildren-beneficiaries while the program implementation is expected to begin late this year.

The DSWD-7 has called on all LGUs to supplement the government's nutrition-related programs in the daycare centers, believing that for children to be productive in their adulthood must first experience what's it like to be healthy kids. - Jasmin R. Uy