MANILA – A Panay News piece on malnutrition qualified as a finalist in this year’s Save the Children Media Awards’ most outstanding article category.
Written by Panay News editor Jonel Amio, the news story titled “Malnutrition a national emergency, too” tackles the malnutrition status of children in Western Visayas, especially in Antique where the malnutrition rate is high.
Amio, along with nine other finalists in the same category, received the award at Silver Lotus Events Place in Quezon City, Manila on Nov. 22.
ABS-CBN’s Jeff Canoy and Nick Villavecer’s piece titled “A Prince of skin and bones” – which tells the story of a fur-year-old boy who suffers from abnormal growth and his grandmother’s day-to-day struggle to feed him and to keep him alive – was named the Most Outstanding Article.
It also got the People’s Choice Award.
Aside from written pieces, photos, short films, full-length films, and special features were also recognized during the awards night.
Save the Children is an independent international organization for children that works in over 120 countries.
The media awards is part of the organization’s Lahat Dapat campaign, which aims to “raise public awareness on the alarming status of child hunger and malnutrition in the Philippines.”
Malnutrition had become a “national emergency”, according to the National Nutrition Council (NNC) as Amio reported.
In Western Visayas, Antique had the most number of malnutrition cases among children below five years old, results of NNC’s 2017 Operation Timbang Plus showed.
NNC is the country’s highest policy-making and coordinating body on nutrition.
On the national level, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute placed the incidence of malnutrition among preschool children at 33.4 percent, according to NNC executive director Maria-Bernardita Flores.
The problem is palpable in barangays where there are nutrition problems, she said.
In Antique, there is undernutrition (6.86 percent), stunting (12.69 percent) and wasting (3.75 percent) among preschool children, said Dr. Azucena Dayanghirang, deputy executive director of NNC who was with Flores./PN
