Bansot

We have big problems in our country. But some are bigger than others and demand urgent attention. Child malnutrition is perhaps the single most important crisis we must do something about quickly.

Why must this problem be urgently addressed? Simply because the future of the country may be compromised. Stunted children with low IQ will grow up less able to help the country compete.

Physical and brain stunting become irreversible after five. The work of Dr. James Heckman of the University of Chicago (Nobel prize economics 2000) emphasized that the intervention should be from age zero to five.

According to UNICEF, 95 children in the Philippines die from malnutrition daily. Twenty-seven out of 1,000 Filipino children do not get past their fifth birthday. A third of Filipino children are stunted or short for their age. Stunting after two years of age can be permanent, irreversible, and even fatal. Children who do make it past their fifth birthday face an uncertain future.

Stunting is defined as impaired growth and development because of poor nutrition. We have a word for it: bansot. Children who are stunted are too short for their age.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), childhood stunting is “largely an irreversible outcome of inadequate nutrition and repeated bouts of infection during the first 1000 days of a child’s life.” Children who are stunted do less well at school and earn lower wages as adults. Irreversible. Let that sink in.

In the Philippines, little progress has been made to reduce stunting despite good economic growth and increased health budgets.

The government has not done much about childhood malnutrition through the years. Now, the private sector has finally taken notice. The Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) will focus on the problem in the hope of getting a positive outcome soon.

Benedicta Du-Baladad, MAP president, believes addressing this problem is important for the Philippine business sector. Ms. Baladad pointed to the long-term threat that malnutrition represents in terms of the quality of the future workforce.

“One in three Filipino children aged five years old and below is severely malnourished, manifested in stunting, which is a standard deviation shorter than the median height for their age. 90 percent of brain development happens by age five. A stunted child will grow up with impaired learning ability, memory, and intellect, unable to reach full mental and physical potential.”

Ms. Baladad continued: “Our current education crisis is not just about classrooms, textbooks, and teachers, but also about poorly nourished children unable to learn, due to weakened learning ability as a result of stunting, and the inability to concentrate in class on a hungry stomach. Our much-vaunted demographic sweet spot is negated by the threat posed by stunted children.”

It is not clear what exactly the MAP under the leadership of Ms. Baladad will do to address childhood malnutrition. It could be something as simple as sponsoring school feeding programs. I remember the late Gina Lopez shifting her efforts from prioritizing improved teaching methods in public schools to feeding the school children first. “A hungry child cannot learn,” she observed.

Another good example is the nutribun program revived by San Miguel during the pandemic. Nutrient-packed and energy-rich nutribuns were distributed through a string of participating Petron stations where the nutribuns were baked.

San Miguel’s Ramon Ang related that the idea for this new food relief program started when, on his way home from the office one afternoon, he observed many street children begging on the streets. So, he mounted the largest food relief effort in the company’s history during the pandemic -- with food donations reaching well over half a billion pesos.

The World Bank lamented that “For nearly 30 years, there have been almost no improvements in the prevalence of undernutrition in the Philippines.” This is why the World Bank is giving us a P9.7 billion World Bank loan to address the stunting of Pinoy kids. Hopefully the money will not be used by bureaucrats for supposed training seminars in hotels for “capacity building”.

The WB loan is supposed to provide interventions that focus on the first 1,000 days of life – from conception through pregnancy and birth, the newborn period, infancy and transition to primary school. Beyond the first thousand days, a child’s future will either be hopeful or hopeless.

The problem of stunting is worse in some regions. In Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao 45 percent of children below five are stunted, in Southwestern Tagalog Region (MIMAROPA) 41 percent, Bicol Region it is 40 percent, Western Visayas 40 percent, and in the south-central Mindanao Region (SOCCKSARGEN) 40 percent.

Good nutrition is a foundation for economic prosperity, and investments in nutrition are highly cost-effective, the World Bank pointed out.

“The persistence of very high levels of childhood undernutrition, despite decades of economic growth and poverty reduction, could lead to a staggering loss of the country’s human and economic potential. A Filipino child with optimal nutrition will have greater cognitive development, stay in school longer, learn more in school, and have a brighter future as an adult, while undernutrition robs other children of their chance to succeed.

“The burden on the Philippine economy brought by childhood undernutrition was estimated at $4.4 billion or 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP in 2015.

“The country’s Human Capital Index (HCI) of 0.52 indicates that the future productivity of a child born today will be half of what could have been achieved with complete education and full health…

“At the basic level, poverty is one of the most important causes of undernutrition: 42.4 percent of children from households in the poorest income quintile are stunted. Governance structures also pose significant challenges for the country’s efforts to combat undernutrition.”

Hunger in the Philippines rose sharply during the pandemic. Social Weather Stations (SWS) surveys show that in September 2020, after seven months of community quarantine, 31 percent of families reported experiencing hunger in the past 30 days, and nine percent were suffering severe hunger – in both cases, the highest levels recorded in more than 20 years.

Hopefully, a working partnership between the private sector and government to address childhood malnutrition will produce the results we need to support future economic growth.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco