DV
In Global Nutrition Report 2016 of International Food Policy Research Institute in
Washington DC, it states that malnutrition creates a cascade of individual and societal
challenges—and opportunities. Malnutrition and poor diets constitute the number-one
driver of the global burden of disease. We already know that the annual GDP losses
from low weight, poor child growth, and micronutrient deficiencies average 11 percent in
Asia and Africa—greater than the loss experienced during the 2008–2010 financial
crisis. This report presents new data on the cost of malnutrition to both societies and
individuals. In the United States, for example, when one person in a household is
obese, the household faces additional annual health care costs equivalent to 8 percent
of its annual income. In China, a diagnosis of diabetes results in an annual 16.3 percent
loss of income for those with the disease. All of these figures mean that the burden of
malnutrition falls heavily on all of us, whether directly suffering or not. But these costs
also represent large opportunities for human and economy betterment, and this report
provides many examples of countries that have seized these opportunities to improve
the lives of their people and the health of their societies by addressing malnutrition.
In Asia, according to UNICEF Statistics (2016), 50 million children under 5 were
wasted and 16 million were severely wasted. This translates into a prevalence of almost
8 percent and just less than 3 percent, respectively.
In the Philippines, malnutrition remains a significant public health concern with a
staggering 3.4 million children who are stunted (short for their age) and more than
300,000 children under 5 years who are severely wasted. This continues to be a serious
child health problem, with the Philippines being highly disaster-prone. The risk of
malnutrition increases in the aftermath of emergencies (UNICEF Philippines, 2015).
To address the high burden of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in the country,
the Philippine Nutrition Cluster prioritized the urgent need to support the development of
national protocols and policy on the management of SAM for children under five years
of age. This was achieved through its community-based management of acute
malnutrition (CMAM) working group led by the Department of Health (DOH). The broad
objective of this prioritization was to improve the access and availability of life-saving
services for children with SAM through the institutionalization of SAM management
within the national and local health systems, in both emergency and non-emergency
settings (UNICEF-Philippines, 2016).
Growing rates of overweight and obesity worldwide are linked to a rise in chronic
diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes - conditions that are life-
threatening and very difficult to treat in places with limited resources and already
overburdened health systems (World Health Organization, 2016.)
REFERENCES
Global Nutrition Report 2016
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATU
RE
World Health Organization, 2016.)
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/
Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATURE
UNICEF-Philippines ,2016
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/
Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATURE
UNICEF Philippines, 2015
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/
Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATURE
UNICEF Statistics (2016)
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/
Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATURE
IV
School feeding contributes to the education and well-being of children. A hungry
child does not grow, cannot learn as well and faces many health risks in the future.
School feeding can bring children into school and out of hunger. It is far more than food-
giving. They are an investment in the world’s poorest children. They are an investment
in our common future and global stability. School feeding can bring children into school
and out of hunger. Strong partnerships can increase factors that pull children to school.
It is a springboard for many positive outcomes for poor children and their families.
School feeding programs engage parents and communities in the promotion of public
health, education and the creation of an independent future. Few safety-net programs
provide so many multi-sector benefits-education- gender equality, food security, poverty
alleviation, nutrition and health-in one single intervention (WFP, 2016).
It has been argued that school meals increase school participation by improving
child nutrition through two links (Vermeersch and Kremer 2004). First, school meals
improve nutrition by enabling children get more nutrients. Second, the improved
nutrition leads to better educational achievements. The study also reveals that „since
child nutrition, child health and schooling reflect household preferences in human capital
investments in the child; they might be correlated without any direct causal relationship
between them‟ (ibid, p.4). Another study also shows that School Feeding Programs can
improve health by reducing morbidity and illness and hence attract children to school
(He 2009).
This meager progress, it is not surprising that a growing number of studies are
seeking effective interventions aiming to improve the nutritional status of children and
associated health. This search is considerably complicated by the complex interplay of
various risk factors associated with malnutrition. These range from health knowledge to
behavior and the presence of infectious diseases, but also to wider social and economic
determinants, such as education, and supply-side factors, such as health care
infrastructure or sanitation (Ruel et al., &2013). In this broad conceptual framework,
interventions aiming to increase the nutritional status of children via the improvement of
food intake, e.g., through breastfeeding promotion, school feeding programs, or various
supplementation or fortification strategies (hereafter referred to as nutritional
interventions), have traditionally received much attention from policy makers and
continue to be implemented at scale in many low- and middle-income countries (WHO,
2018).
School feeding in the Philippines is a tool which today effectively enables
hundreds of millions of poor children worldwide to attend school—in developed and
developing countries alike. One of the advantages of school feeding is that, in addition
to enabling education, it has positive direct and indirect benefits relating to a number of
other development goals (namely for gender equity, poverty and hunger reduction,
partnerships and cooperation, HIV/AIDS care and prevention, and improvements in
health and other social indicators. (UNEP, 2016).;
Nutritional intervention programs have however been found in various parts of
the world to be capable of reducing the prevalence of childhood malnutrition; and six
interventions have particularly been found to be very cost-effective in a wide range of
settings. These interventions include exclusive breastfeeding for at least four months
and, if possible, for six months; adequate complementary feeding starting at about six
months with continued breastfeeding for two years; appropriate nutritional care of sick
and malnourished children; adequate intake of vitamin A for women and children;
adequate intake of iron for women and children; and adequate intake of iodine by all
members of the household. This study is to compare the nutritional status of a
community that benefited from the nutrition intervention program, implemented by
UNICEF in Bayelsa State, south-south Nigeria, with a similar community that did not
benefit from the intervention. The results of the study would be useful in scaling up the
program to cover other communities in the Niger delta region.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793452/
Imdad A, Yakoob MY, Bhutta ZA., 2011
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3793452/
Penny ME, Creed-Kanashiro HM, Robert RC, Narro MR, Caulfield LE, Black RE, et al.,
1990
(WFP,2016).
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATU
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UNEP, 2016
https://www.academia.edu/37632092/
Chapter_2_REVIEW_OF_RELATED_LITERATURE
Ruel et al. 2013 & WHO 2018
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-resource-110519-093256
