More malnourished, stunted kids seen due to pandemic

MANILA, Philippines — The government is worried that malnutrition and the stunting of Filipino children will worsen because of COVID-19, which has displaced thousands of workers and disrupted the operations of several businesses.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said cases of stunting or low height for one’s age and wasting or low weight for one’s height, and the number of underweight children decreased last year but may go up again due to the pandemic.

“Our problem now is if we measure them again in 2020, if it’s similar to the trend reflected in the SWS (Social Weather Stations) poll, most likely, it would go up again,” Nograles said in a live online session last Saturday.

“Malnutrition among children is very worrisome for us because rapid brain development occurs in the age of two and below. If the child is undernourished, he might face difficulties in the future,” he added.

An SWS poll released late last month indicated that the proportion of families who experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months reached a new record-high of 30.7 percent or about 7.6 million households.

Nograles, head of the administration’s hunger task force, said the government would provide food aid to malnourished children aged six months to 23 months old and nutritionally-at-risk pregnant women. Data showing that a third of Filipino children suffer from stunting emphasize the need to assist the age group, the Cabinet official added.

Nograles said the government’s dietary supplementary program would involve the house-to-house distribution of nutritious food products like nutribuns, iron fortified rice, instant laing and instant pochero.

The government, Nograles said, is also planning to distribute food products like micronutrient growth mix and fresh produce sourced from small farmers.