BAGUIO CITY July 19 – 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 415 compared to the 665 malnourished schoolchildren recorded during the previous schoolyear.
City Schools Division medical officer Dra. Jocelyn de Jesus revealed that the malnourished schoolchildren are those wasted, severely wasted and stunted who are in need of the implementation of appropriate interventions to improve their nutritional status and allow them to cope with their classes.
She claimed that the wasted and stunted schoolchildren are the target of a 120day school feeding program geared towards significantly improving the nutritional status of the malnourished children at the end of the 4-month period wherein they will be subjected to further assessment on what are the other interventions that will be provided them to realize the desired improvement in 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 120day school feeding program for the identified 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 schoolyear so that they will be made to undergo the required school feeding program to improve their nutritional status so that they will be able to internalize their daily lessons in school.
For this year, Baguio City is 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 it 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
