Palawan Province – Super Typhoon Odette (Rai), the 15th and the strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines last year, made a landfall on Palawan Province at 5:00 PM last 17 December 2021 and made a devastating destruction of houses, and power, water and telecommunication outages. On 20 December, the government declared the state of calamity in the MIMAROPA region and other regions affected.

Three weeks after Typhoon Odette’s landfall, a warning that nutrition and food security are at risk in hard-hit areas unless immediate food needs are provided over the next six months was declared by United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). With this, availability of reliable information pre-, during and post-disaster, including planning, and coming up with informed, grounded, strategic decisions to address challenges and gaps in provision of nutrition services during emergency response, recovery, and rehabilitation is needed.

With Region IV-B (MIMAROPA) as one of the highly affected regions, the NNC, with support from UNICEF deployed an Information Management Officer (IMO) last 6 February to Palawan Province for the management of the collection, analysis, and sharing of information on nutrition management. The IMO will present this information to LGUs, partner agencies, and with the national and regional nutrition cluster to facilitate a timely and effective nutrition management and to monitor and evaluate the impact of the implemented programs. The IMO is expected to assist in the formulation of provincial capacity building for preparedness and contingency planning to prevent huge damages in the health of the people of the province when another storm strikes.

Written by: IMO Xylene Ann B. Notario