“Around 30 percent of children under 5 years of age are stunted – considered high for its level of income and high compared to most of its neighbors”
At last year’s Senate hearing to discuss the 2025 budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, it was pointed out that a third of Filipino children are short for their age, and that stunting after two years can be permanent, irreversible, and even fatal.
The persistent issue of child stunting in the Philippines has therefore triggered calls for the DSWD to reassess the implementation of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).
The reasoning goes like this: If the 4Ps is intended to prevent children from getting malnourished, and the program takes care of the poorest of the poor, why is one-third of Filipinos still stunted?
For this year, the DSWD wanted a budget of P114 billion for the 4Ps, or an increase of P8 billion from its 2024 budget, but is the program effectively addressing hunger and malnutrition?
The Philippine Institute for Development Studies has pointed out that inadequate early childcare and prenatal interventions are major factors contributing to high stunting rates in the country.
For its part, the World Health Organization defines stunting as impaired growth due to poor nutrition and repeated infections, which can lead to long-term consequences such as poor cognition, low educational performance, and reduced productivity in adulthood.
Meanwhile, UNICEF has lamented that 95 children in the Philippines die every day from malnutrition, and 27 out of every 1,000 Filipino children do not make it past their fifth birthday.
The 4Ps program currently supports 4.2 million families, providing at least P750 a month to beneficiaries for the improvement of children and pregnant mothers’ health through check-ups and proper nutrition.
DSWD should not only monitor compliance but also whether or not 4Ps is truly improving children’s nutrition. In some regions, the level of stunting exceeds 40 percent of children under five years of age.
This is true in Bangsamoro Region in Muslim Mindanao, Mimaropa, Bicol, and Western Visayas. In rural areas, children are more likely to be stunted than their urban counterparts.
Among the primary causes of undernutrition are poor infant and young child feeding practices; ill health; low access to diverse, nutritious foods; inadequate access to health services; unhealthy household environment; and poverty.
What is clear at this point is that the country needs to invest more in programs tackling childhood undernutrition to eliminate what is long considered a “silent pandemic” afflicting many of the country’s poor and vulnerable population.
Childhood stunting – characterized by prolonged nutritional deficiency among infants and young children – is considered one of the most serious but least-addressed problems in the world and an even more pressing issue in the Philippines.
Here, the Philippines can follow the example of Indonesia, which recently launched an ambitious $4.3 billion free-meal program to combat stunted growth due to malnutrition.
Stunting affects 21.5 percent of children in the archipelago of some 282 million people. The government aims to reduce the rate to five percent by 2045.
The Indonesian government has pledged to provide nutritious meals free to tens of millions of schoolchildren as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, saying it would improve their quality of life and boost economic growth.
News reports indicate at least 190 kitchens run by third-party catering services have opened nationwide and preparing meals from midnight before distributing them to schoolchildren and pregnant women.
Our ASEAN neighbor has allocated 62 US cents per meal and a budget of $4.3 billion for the 2025 fiscal year. It is set to deliver meals to almost 83 million people by 2029.
In the Philippines, around 30 percent of children under 5 years of age are stunted – considered high for its level of income and high compared to most of its neighbors.
Other countries with similar levels of income have rates of stunting averaging around 20 percent of children under 5 years of age.
The Philippines’ rate of stunting places it fifth among countries in the East Asia and Pacific region with the highest stunting prevalence, and among the top 10 countries globally with the highest number of stunted children.
Hence, the World Bank recommends several measures to address the problem of malnutrition and child stunting,
These include securing adequate and predictable financing for nutrition-related programs to achieve nutrition goals; implementing an evidence-based package of nutrition interventions that should be made available to eligible households in high-stunting municipalities; addressing the underlying determinants of undernutrition through a multi-sector effort, and ensuring that nutrition is one of the key priorities in the agendas of both the executive and legislative bodies in municipalities.
(Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)