BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
ILOILO City – A baby boy born here yesterday symbolically pushed the country’s population to 100 million.
For a nation where poverty remains a challenge, the milestone highlights the need to provide more for a ballooning population.
Other cities across the Philippines also recognized their symbolic “100 millionth” baby yesterday.
Baby Boy Belo was delivered at exactly 11:46 a.m., according to the Population Commission (PopCom) Region 6.
Mother Karla Belo, 34, of Barangay Lanit, Jaro district had a normal delivery at the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC).
Baby Boy Belo weighed 2.6 kilograms and a fourth child in the Belo family.
Though Karla and husband Rene, a 43-year-old construction worker, still have to make up their minds what name to give the newest member of their family, they agreed on a nickname – “Dred”, short for one hundred – to mark the country’s population milestone.
The Belo family is a beneficiary of the government’s poverty alleviation scheme, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
Yesterday, the family received a P5,000 financial aid from PopCom, the agency’s way of marking the milestone here.
Baby Boy Belo was also issued a certificate confirming him as the symbolic “100Mth Pinoy” in Iloilo City, said Roilo Vincent Laguna, information officer of PopCom Region 6.
The baby will also be given personal PhilHealth identification number by the PopCom Central Office.
WVMC was the official waiting area for Iloilo City’s symbolic 100 millionth Filipino.
According to the 2010 population projections of the Philippine Statistics Authority, the Philippines became a home for 100 million Filipinos shortly after midnight yesterday.
Given the population growth rate of 1.35 percent, Region 6’s population was projected to have reached 7,518,063 too.
This demographic event brings both a positive promise as well as challenge to the country as it struggles to give its people a better quality life, PopCom said.
For the commission, this is a good time to highlight the importance of the Philippine Population Management Program in pursuing national and local development.
In Western Visayas, PopCom has decided to recognize the birth of seven babies born yesterday from six provinces (Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, Iloilo and Negros Occidental) and one from Iloilo City.
It set the following conditions:
- baby should have been born in a government licensed health facility
- born through normal spontaneous delivery
- the health facility is observing the Philippine Standard Time; and be certified by the attending doctor.
The baby must also be born at 12:06 a.m. or seconds/minutes later. But in the case of Iloilo City, the mothers who gave birth within the allotted time either did so in private hospitals or underwent Caesarian operation, thereby disqualifying them from the PopCom incentive. The goodies thus went to Baby Boy Belo and his family.
Laguna said PopCom will name within the week the other symbolic “100Mth Pinoy” chosen in the other parts of Western Visayas./PN
