Over 500,000 pupils suffering from severe malnutrition — DepEd

Education Secretary Armin Luistro. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — While Christendom is feasting on holiday food, poverty pushes over half a million elementary pupils to severe malnutrition.

The Department of Education (DepEd) disclosed that 562,262 pupils in kindergarten and elementary levels (Grades 1 to 6) enrolled in public schools this year have been considered “severely wasted” based on a nutritional status report as of Aug. 31, 2012.

These pupils are the target beneficiaries of a school-based feeding program to restore them to health and to keep them in school.

The DepEd through its Health and Nutrition Center (HNC) said, however, it could only feed 42,372 schoolchildren, or 7.54 percent of the identified severely malnourished pupils, in 1,010 public elementary schools in 28 provinces.

For the feeding of more than half a million malnourished pupils, school officials and teachers should collaborate with their respective local governments, nongovernment organizations, parent-teacher associations and other community volunteers for support, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said in a recent directive.

Schools were also encouraged to plant malunggay (moringa) trees and establish vegetable gardens to source ingredients for the children’s hot meals.

The school-based feeding program used to address “short-term hunger” experienced by children who do not eat breakfast and/or walk long distances to reach school, resulting in their inattentiveness in class or in frequent absences.

But since its implementation in 1997, the feeding program has shifted to addressing the more serious problem of undernutrition among schoolchildren, the DepEd said.

DepEd said the feeding intervention has been targeting young pupils in the critical stage of mental and physical development and vulnerable to illnesses and malnutrition. The dropout rate is also higher among younger pupils.

Luistro said the feeding program aims to rehabilitate at least 70 per cent of the severely wasted schoolchildren back to normal nutritional status at the end of 100 to 120 feeding days.

The program also seeks to increase the children’s attendance by 85 to 100 per cent and to improve the children’s health values and behavior.

The DepEd said each hot meal would cost about P15 based on developed recipes using malunggay.

From being a breakfast feeding program, it has been renamed as a school-based feeding program so as not to limit the feeding to breakfast time and to let school officials decide when best to feed the children.