BAGUIO CITY – The City Schools Division reported a significant drop in the number of malnourished schoolchildren enrolled in the different public schools in the city with only four hundred fifteen compared to the six hundred sixty five malnourished schoolchildren recorded during the previous school year.
City Schools Division medical officer Dr. Jocelyn de Jesus revealed that the malnourished schoolchildren are those wasted, severely wasted and stunted who are in need of appropriate interventions to improve their nutritional status and allow them to cope up with their classes.
She claimed that the wasted and stunted schoolchildren are the target of a 120-day school feeding program to significantly improve the nutritional status of the malnourished children at the end of the 4-month period wherein they will be subjected to further assessment for any further intervention to improve their existing nutritional status.
“We continue to implement various interventions to address the nutrition needs of our identified malnourished schoolchildren for them to achieve significant improvement in their nutritional status after having undergone the prescribed interventions of the government agencies and the schools where they are enrolled,” de Jesus stressed.
The medical officer claimed the agency was provided a P1.7 million budget for this year to implement the 120-day school feeding program for the malnourished schoolchildren but based on their computations on the prescribed P18 per student per day, the agency will be incurring a savings of more than P700,000 from the project funds which will be used to fund the implementation of other required interventions that will ensure the improvement of the nutritional status of the malnourished schoolchildren.
According to her, most of the malnourished schoolchildren do not actually come from poor families but it just so happened that they have problems meeting the standards of their weight compared to their height among other aspects on how to gauge the nourishment of schoolchildren based on prevailing standards being imposed by concerned government agencies.
She claimed that the school officials continue to monitor the presence of malnourished schoolchildren enrolled in the different public schools in the city every school year so that they will be made to undergo the required school feeding program.
For this year, Baguio City was an awardee of the National Nutrition Council (NNC) for having maintained its being a Consistent Regional Outstanding Winner on Nutrition (CROWN) for the second straight year and that the city’s ability to maintain the same for another year will elevate city to the Nutrition Honor Ward (NHA) which is equivalent to the Hall of Fame award given by other award-giving bodies in the global village.
De Jesus expressed confidence with the implementation of available interventions, the malnutrition cases among schoolchildren will be reduced in the coming years.
By Dexter A. See
