UP Visayas’ Guimaras malnutrition program, Team Kabataang Katipuneros, and Unilab’s Ideas Positive competition

Western Visayas is ranked in the top 5 for underweight Filipino children 0-5 years old and top 3 in children 6-10 years old in the National Nutrition Survey (2008). The problem has been particularly severe in Barangay La Paz, Nueva Valencia where the UP Visayas Taklong Island Marine Biological Station is located (Taklong Island National Marine Reserve or TINMAR). As part of UPV’s BS Public Health program, it sends its BSPH students to the various communities with health challenges. In this case, UPV’s Team Kabataang Katipuneros (Maugri Grace Laluma, Leo John Estrada, John Christopher Luces, Roy Dahildahil, and Mel Vincent Oliva), all BS Public Health senior students, with yours truly as their mentor, developed a community nutrition program proposal whose objective was to reduce nutrition prevalence in Barangay La Paz by 80 percent, and submitted it to the Unilab Ideas Positive (2012) competition for funding (P100,000).

Unilab Inc. launched its first nationwide Unilab Ideas Positive (UIP) competition in May 2012. They issued a call for a community-based health program proposal from teams of five students — a positive idea initiative that aims to transform a Filipino sitio/barangay. It started in 2010 with Metro Manila schools as participants and with only one proposal as a final entry. Now on its third year, Unilab awarded P100,000 to 12 teams nationwide for an actual six-month implementation, which started in July 1012.

Team Kabataang Katipuneros implemented their Kalinisan at Kalusugan para sa Kaunlaran (KKK) project in June 2012 with a daunting task of reducing the number 1 rank of underweight 0-10 years old (for five consecutive years) of Barangay La Paz through a multi-pronged approach of health education, community participation, immersion, and organization, supplemental feeding and use of malunggay powder, and grassroots training on sanitation, meal budgeting, and proper nutrition. After nine months of implementation, as of March 2013, Barangay La Paz is now ranked number 20 with the original number of 210 undernourished children now reduced to four (originally severely undernourished and now mildly undernourished) with a mean weight gain of 7 kgs.

Unilab called the 12 semi-finalists to Manila for the next round of competition last April 15-16 to choose the top 5 finalists. Team Kabataang Katipuneros defended their results last April 16 and on that same day, was chosen as one of the top 5 finalists. The top 5 finalists presented their results again on April 17 with another set of judges with scores going back to zero. UPV’s Team Kabataang Katipuneros was the first to present and managed to bag the first runner-up trophy. Team Waya of WVSU won the top prize. Team Green Garden of University of Southeastern Philippines (Davao) was crowned as runner-up and Team Belat Bulate of St. Louis University  (Baguio) and Team 5 for Life of UP Diliman rounded up the top 5.

Team Kabataang Katipuneros would like to thank all their partners in the implementation of the KKK program without whose support, Barangay La Paz would still be ranked highest in malnutrition in Guimaras. They include their respective team members in Guimaras: Teams Juan and Bam, UPV BIDANI, Rotary International Iloilo West, Yakult, Uygongco Foundation, the Guimaras provincial government, the Nueva Valencia municipal governments, the barangay council of La Paz, TINMAR, UPV Marine Biological Station, Panay Growers Association, their external mentor, Dr. Mel Balandaria of UPOU, and the rest of the members of the UPV BSPH faculty.

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Dr. Philip Ian Padilla is the current chairman of the Division of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, and former director of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, UP Visayas in Miag-ao, Iloilo. He was a graduate of UPV (BS Biology, cum laude), UP College of Medicine (MD), and Nagasaki University’s Institute of Tropical Medicine (Ph.D. Medical Science (Bacteriology)). He was trained as a post-doctoral research fellow (Biochemistry and Cell Biology) at the Pulmonary-Critical Care Medicine Branch, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. He was invited back by Nagasaki University as a visiting professor of Molecular Epidemiology from 2009 to 2011. For comments, reactions or queries, e-mail him at [email protected].