THE government’s failure to address malnutrition has caused a significant increase in the number of malnourished children in the country, Vice President Jejomar Binay said Thursday as he vowed to fight malnutrition and poverty once elected as president.
His spokesman Joey Salgado said promoting nutrition among high-risk groups including children had long been a Binay advocacy.
He said 19.9 percent of all Filipino children aged zero to 5 were underweight, and that at least 1.5 million were malnourished because they didn’t have enough money to buy food.
Save the Children Philippines country director Ned Olney had previously said that at least 2.7-million malnourished Filipino children skipped meals a day because they didn’t have enough money to buy food while 1.5 million aged zero to 10 years old went without eating for a day.
Binay would be working to significantly bring down the number of malnourished once he was elected president, Salgado said.
According to the 8th National Nutrition Survey of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology, 19.9 percent of all children aged zero to 5 were underweight.
While the number is slightly lower than the 20.2 percent registered in 2011, “various programs will be intensified to fight malnutrition under the Binay administration,” Salgado said.
Wasting or thinness (low weight for height), meanwhile, increased to 7.9 percent from 7.3 percent in 2011, the report said.
“The highest prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting are among those in the rural areas,” the report said.
Salgado said Makati’s low malnutrition rate were due to the health and nutrition programs of the city that were implemented through the Makati Health Department and its nutrition office, and that those dated back to the term of Binay and continued by his son Junjun Binay.
He said Binay started the nutrition program while he was mayor of Makati city, adding Makati’s malnutrition rate continued to be the lowest in Metro Manila.