TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan – Maria Gisela Lonzaga, acting National Nutrition Council Nutrition Program Coordinator has called on residents of Quirino province to address malnutrition after the latter recorded the highest and most number of stunting cases in the region.
Lonzaga made the call during the recent Local Government Units Mobilization Forum on Nutrition held in the province.
“Invest in nutrition. Let us work together to achieve a healthy and productive Quirinians,” she told more than a hundred officials from the local government units, provincial line agencies, Department of Education and a state university.
The province in a recent study has been identified as one of the 36 priority provinces in the country for LGU mobilization for nutrition improvement.
Governor Junie Cua likewise reiterated the call of NNC and asked stakeholders in the province to support nutrition programs of the provincial government and the former to reduce cases of stunting in his province.
Stunting or stunted growth is a reduced growth rate in human development and is a primary manifestation of malnutrition and recurrent infections in early childhood and even before birth due to malnutrition during fetal development brought by malnourished mothers.
The World Health Organization reported that as 2012, there are 162 million children under five years of age or 25 percent of the total children’s population were stunted.
Unfortunately, 90 percent of the world’s stunted children live in Africa and Asia.
Experts claimed that stunted children may never regain the height lost as a result of stunting and most children will never gain the corresponding body weight.
Records from DOST-FNRI showed that as of 2015, Quirino registered a prevalence rate of 44.1% of stunted children under five years old and 37.8% among school children, making the province the highest in Cagayan Valley for stunting cases.
Lonzaga added that the agency likewise provided lectures on nutrition and malnutrition situation to orient the participants on recent nutrition issues.
The mobilization forum is part of the Philippine Plan of Action on Nutrition (PPAN), an integral part of the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, considered as the country’s response to malnutrition.
