Isabela’s milk-feeding success merits replicating countrywide
A single glass of milk, 250 ml, delivers eight grams of complete protein. Plus calcium, vitamin B12, iodine and other essential nutrients for bone formation, muscle growth and brain function.
Those nutritional facts may be too abstract for pauper parents. Isabela province nonetheless ensures free milk-feeding in its poorest barangays. And results are notable among children from five to 12 years old:
• Stunting, pagkabansot, decreased 32.2 percent.
• Wasting, pangangayayat, declined 44.8 percent.
That’s only from 2022 to 2025, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Nelson Paguirigan reported. The once malnourished children are now able to regularly attend school, compete in sports and excel in scholastics.
Governor Rodito Albano determined to combat malnutrition upon the start of his first term in 2019. He piloted milk-feeding in the most penurious barangay of San Pablo town. Targeted were 800 undernourished children from kindergarten to sixth grade.
Albano started small: twice weekly ready-to-drink milk for one year. Outcome was big: 48.6 percent drop in stunting and wasting by the fifth year.
He didn’t wait for the first results to come in. He expanded the program province-wide. Milk-feeding was initiated in the whole of San Pablo, Cabagan, Tumauini, Sto. Tomas, Sta. Maria, Mallig, Ramon, Burgos and Quezon municipalities.
Albano’s vision is to invest in people. “What is the value of roads, bridges and buildings if our people are hungry?” he said. Infrastructure alone cannot define progress without corresponding investments in human wellbeing.
Albano mobilized all departments of Isabela’s provincial capitol. He reached out to National Dairy Authority and DepEd. Private firms SN Aboitiz Power-Magat, Nickel Asia and Universal Leaf pitched in.
Fresh milk from Isabela dairy cooperatives is blended with Sustagen formula for maximum nutritional impact. The program expanded to infants and preschoolers aged 0 to 59 months. Lactating mothers too were given pasteurized milk thrice weekly. DepEd initiates milk-feeding for grade schoolers for six weeks, after which the provincial capitol and private partners take over.
The nutrition campaign grew beyond milk-feeding. The provincial government distributed starter chickens, eggs and poultry vitamins. Poor folk were trained to raise poultry in backyards. It’s not only for protein enrichment but also income boost. Vegetable seedlings were also given away for the same purpose.
Isabela’s nutrition program merits nationwide replicating. Eradicating stunting and wasting is the first step to improving Filipino schoolchildren’s performance. No longer should they flunk international tests for Math, Science and Reading Comprehension. Prioritizing a child’s first 1,000 days has proven results worldwide. Same with full nourishment for lactating mothers.
China and India began massive milk-feeding in the 1980s. Results are amazing. By early 2000s Chinese young adult males became 3.2 inches and females 2.4 inches taller than their parents in the 1960s. Nearly the same with Indian counterparts.
Philippine national dairy supply isn’t encouraging. Hot climate isn’t conducive to grow cattle. Few grazing lands are big enough to meet the ratio of one hectare per cow. Cultural quirks hamper national dairy’s cattle dispersal. Beneficiaries are required to return only female offspring, but fiesta-crazy folk oftentimes slaughter the calves. Goat-racing for milk, reputedly closest to human milk, is still germinant.
But the country needs to start somewhere in milk-feeding versus malnutrition. Isabela has shown the way.
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“Give us two weeks to put it out,” San Miguel Corp. CEO Ramon S. Ang said of the subsurface fire raging at the 41-hectare Navotas landfill. “We will dump and bulldoze smothering soil and mud.”
The volume of earth and number of dump trucks and bulldozers doesn’t matter, Ang told newspaper columnists on Wednesday. He just wants to extinguish the blaze the soonest.
Three-fourths or 30 hectares have been burning since April 10. Extreme temperature ignited methane produced by rotting garbage 15 to 20 meters high, as tall as five to seven stories. Smog has been blanketing the northern half of Metro Manila and southern half of Bulacan. Residents with lung problems and comorbidities have been sickened.
Tycoon Reghis Romero’s Philippine Ecology Systems Corp. held a 20-year franchise to the landfill till August 2025. Before expiration, PhilEco got a six-month extension till February 2026. After which, DENR gave it six months to finish a “Safe Closure and Rehabilitation Plan” till August 2026.
Ang’s SMC owns the Navotas property. The court in 2023 approved land expropriation, not the landfill operation, to fulfill government’s 50-year Build-Operate-Transfer concession of the nearby New Manila International Airport. The landfill is part of NMIA’s footprint. San Miguel Aerocity Inc. (SMAI) is to erect an elevated expressway and metro rail linking NMIA to Metro Manila.
DENR’s Environment Management Bureau, which surveyed the landfill last February, noted incomplete soil overlay and gas ventilation pipes. EMB officials brought it up in meeting March 16 convened by DENR with PhilEco, SMAI and Navotas City officials. SMAI agreed to let PhilEco return to finish its restoration plan. PhilEco attempted to withdraw its plan but DENR denied it on April 14.
Ang said the Navotas fire will not distract nor delay his cleanup of Roxas Boulevard’s gigantic sewers from Manila to Pasay. He will spend P1 billion to extract dried mud and jackhammer cement waste from the 7.6-kilometer long, American-era tunnel underneath the bay view area.
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