2 million schoolchildren undernourished—DepEd

MANILA, Philippines—More than two million public school children go to class undernourished placing them at risk of dropping out or losing focus on school work, a health and nutrition official of the Department of Education said.

Data obtained by the Inquirer showed that some 15.59 percent of the total 13.64 million elementary school children aged six to 12 during school year 2010-2011 weighed below normal levels.

Of this number, more than half a million were considered “severely wasted” or severely undernourished while 11 percent were counted as “wasted” or undernourished under standards of the World Health Organization.

“Considering our benchmark, it’s alarming. It’s very high, our prevalence of 16 percent,” Dr. Juan Araojo Jr., acting assistant director of the DepEd Health and Nutrition Center.

Poor nutrition is associated with poor performance in school: children who go to class hungry are less likely to understand the day’s lessons. Araojo said poor nutrition is among the known factors behind the early dropout incidence.

DepEd’s Nutrition Data showed that some 81.67 percent or 10.58 million students were within the normal weight for their height (body mass index). Some 2.75 million or 356,509 students were meanwhile classified as either overweight or obese.

Among undernourished children meanwhile, all regions across the country had more than a 10 percent incidence.

Southern Luzon (Calabarzon and Mimaropa) had the highest prevalence with more than 22 percent incidence each.   The Bicol region was close by with 21 percent incidence.

The National Capital Region had a 16.71 percent incidence of under-nutrition, while the Cordillera Administrative Region had the lowest count at 8.26 percent of the region’s total public elementary enrollment.

Araojo said DepEd, through school feeding and health programs, have been able to cut the number of undernourished children by in the last few years by an average one percent of the total public elementary school population annually.

But at the rate government is going, it may well be unlikely to reach the country’s target undernutrition prevalence of between 6 and 7 percent by 2015, the deadline of the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, said Araojo.

“Five years ago, the prevalence of undernourished school children is 21 to 22 percent.  We have reduced that to 16 percent in the last five years so at least 1 percent a year,” said the official.

“Now that the deadline is four years away, we think that if we will not increase our resources for feeding programs, the reduction might only be up to 10 to 11 percent by 2015,” said Araojo.

This school year, DepEd relaunched its breakfast feeding program with a P57-million budget for a target 110,000 elementary school students in areas with the poorest nourishment indicators, he said.

The program goes hand-in-hand with DepEd’s program to promote vegetable farming in schools as an alternative source of ingredients for a high-nutrition school canteen menu.