ILOILO – The provincial government has been cited for reducing Iloilo’s under nutrition rate.
The Department of Health and National Nutrition Council (NCC) awarded the provincial government with the 2017 Green Banner (regional level) in recognition of the latter’s nutrition program as the best in Western Visayas.
The awarding ceremony on Dec. 4 was held at The Mansion hotel on General Luna Street, Iloilo City. Provincial Health Office (PHO) chief Dr. Patricia Grace Trabado and Dr. Maria Socorro Colmenares Quiñon, the provincial nutrition action officer, received the banner.
“Last year our under nutrition prevalence rate showed a downward trend,” said Trabado.
This was due to PHO’s effective implementation of the Local Nutrition Action Plan for 2017, she explained.
In 2017, the province’s under nutrition prevalence was at 3.79 percent, or roughly 9,500 children. This dropped to 3.27 percent (roughly 6,200 undernourished children) this year.
Quiñon said the PHO would strive to further lower the prevalence rate.
Under nutrition could become a cyclical problem if not addressed adequately, she said.
Undernourished children would grow as undernourished adults who, in turn, would be begetting undernourished offspring, she explained.
Quiñon said one way to curb under nutrition is to address the problem on hunger and poverty.
“Ang kakulang sang food leads to malnutrition, that’s why ang aton best practice is to involve the Agriculture and Social Welfare departments in addressing the problem,” she said.
In July this year, NCC revealed that Iloilo had a stunting prevalence of 10.56 percent among provinces in the region.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines stunting as the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection and inadequate psychosocial stimulation.
Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age is more than two standard deviations below the WHO Child Growth Standards median.
Poverty deprived stunted children of nutritious food necessary for growth, said NNC regional nutrition program coordinator Nona Tad-y.
Meanwhile, Iloilo had a 3.08 percent prevalence rate in wasting, NNC revealed.
Wasting or thinness indicates, in most cases, a recent and severe process of weight loss, which is often associated with acute starvation and/or severe disease, stated WHO.
Impaired growth has adverse functional consequences on the child, it added. Some of those consequences include poor cognition and educational performance.
Aside from poverty, another factor that contributed to stunting and wasting was poor nutrition education, said Tad-y.
Parents may not know they were serving to their children food that did not have nutritional value, she explained./PN
