The National Nutrition Council Regional Office 1 successfully spearheaded the review of the 2020 implementation of the Regional Plan of Action (RPAN) for Nutrition held on February 10-11, 2021 via zoom. The said activity was attended by the members of the Regional Nutrition Committee thru its Technical Working Group and representatives from the Local Government Units and Regional Federations including local media group.
The activity highlighted the presentation of LGUs reports, 2020 Operation Timbang (OPT) Plus results, 2019 Highlights of the Expanded National Nutrition Survey (eNNS) and RPAN Accomplishments report followed by a workshop on retargeting and identifying of gaps, challenges, and implementation of the plan.
In his opening message, OIC-Nutrition Program Coordinator of NNC, Kendall Gatan reiterated the formulation of the RPAN as the regionalization of the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition which embodies the commitments of all stakeholders in the region with corresponding budget to address the still alarming malnutrition problems.
“The challenge now is that we are in a pandemic where most programs were contextualized and re-strategized in response to the effect of this public health emergency and hopefully we can still attain the same goal which is improved nutrition,” he added.
The planning team were divided into 3 groups to assess the challenges on Nutrition Governance, Nutrition Specific Programs and Nutrition Sensitive Programs, respectively. Outputs were then presented afterwards.
Among the identified challenges include limited mobilization of the nutrition workers at all level due to the current situation, lack of support to the nutrition programs, non-compliance of target beneficiaries, availability of budget and identification of target beneficiaries for the specific programs.
The team then recommended that the RNC to continue utilize online platforms for information dissemination, reaching out to the LCEs for support, incorporating the nutrition programs and projects in the LGUs priorities, strengthening promotion, monitoring and coordination to the target individuals and concerned implementers.
The body will meet again for the updating of the RPAN 2019-2022 to realign its goals and programs as response and recovery plan for nutrition. /CPF
