Stunting is a chronic or long term malnutrition that affects children early in life indicated by their height that is short for their age.  Being “Pandak” or “Potot” is commonly accepted in many families as normal size for Filipinos, but could actually be an outcome of chronic poor health and nutrition in the early childhood of the individual that impair both physical and mental development permanently. Stunting is a global problem affecting 161 million under five year old children and an estimated 3.4 million of which are in the Philippines. Among the regions, Zamboanga Peninsula accounts for 38.7% of the country’s 30% stunted children.

Reducing the prevalence of stunting in the country requires investments on nutrition for appropriate and adequate interventions and involves monitoring of height with appropriate measuring tool to generate quality data which is among the issues that need to be addressed.  The National Nutrition Council allocated funds for stainless Steel Rulers to be given to areas based on priority provinces, 4^th 5^th and 6^th class municipalities, areas with poor OPT coverage CY 2013 and Early Warning System expansion areas in 2014 by the National Nutrition Council.

In Region 9, twelve out of 67 municipalities were allotted stainless steel rulers based on the selection criteria. A total of 245 steel rulers will be turned over to the municipalities of Siay, Malangas and Talusan in Zamboanga Sibugay; Pitogo and Kumalarang in Zamboangadel Sur and; Baliguan, Liloy, Godod, Mutia, La Libertad and Sergio Osme?a in Zamboanga del Norte. Initial distribution of the stainless steel rulers was done in the second and third weeks of January in six municipalities. Led by the NNC’s Nutrition Program Coordinator Maria del Pilar Pamela Tarroza and  Ms. Nimfa Ekong, Nutrition officer,  the turn-over of the rulers was done in a meeting with the mayors, the nutrition action officers, municipal officials, barangay officials and BNS of the respective municipalities. The meeting served as an opportune time for nutrition advocacy on prioritizing interventions for young children to address the problem of stunting in particular during the first 1000 days of the Child. The importance of height and the proper way of measuring it were emphasized. Thus, the meeting was also primarily to get the commitment of the Chief Executives and barangay officials to fabricate the height boards where the steel rulers should be mounted before the distribution to the barangays and BNS.

As a parting message NPC Tarroza reminded that the proper use of the steel rulers mounted in height boards will generate reliable data and facilitate the identification of children affected with under nutrition and stunting as well as help the local nutrition committees to plan appropriate intervention to correct thenutritional deficiencies.