Malnutrition
By: Maria Carmela Mende
We eat but not healthy. According to the research, there are over 3 million children who suffer in protein deficiency which leads to malnutrition. Children are always hungry but don’t eat the right food for them. What makes them malnourish is due to inadequate intake of food and nutrients. People are also malnourished, or suffer from over nutrition if they consume too many calories. Malnutrition is an important concern in the world especially in the Philippines because it leads to development issues and increases poverty in our country.
Malnutrition in the Philippines is caused by a host of interrelated factors- health, physical, social, economic, and others because it affects our height, weight, relationship to other people and etc. About 4 million (31.8%) adolescents and 5 million (13.2%) adults, including older persons were found to be underweight. Death rate in the Philippines: 11.8 and we ranked 61 out of 92 countries death rate in malnutrition.The United Nations has reported that an estimated six million Filipino children are malnourished, while at least 66 percent under the age of six do not have childcare.
One of the reasons why people in the Philippines suffer hunger due to high pricing of goods and because of that there are about 28 million in our country who cannot even afford to purchase enough healthy food to satisfy their family’s hunger problems. Another reason is that Philippines lack focus on the education in proper food intake for children. According to research, 3.1 million Children die every year due to malnutrition. An additional 165 million children who manage to survive malnutrition in their early years experience small growth and cognitive development, undermining their future productivity and so as their income.
According toDr. Edilberto Garcia, providing nutrition education and counselling are some of the government’s strategies to fight malnutrition, especially in children. The education and counselling practices teach correct feeding procedures and aim to improve individuals’ knowledge of pediatric areas to improve healthcare in the Philippines. Education in proper food intake helps lessen the problem in malnutrition in the Philippines because it helps lessen the number of cases in malnutrition in our country. Another goal is to reduce death rate in the Philippines especially in children.
In order to improve food consumption within households, dietary concepts that stress cooking vegetables and proper hygiene practices should be encouraged. This knowledge could help reduce the amount of underweight and stunted children.
Goal today is to lessen death rate due to malnutrition in children and increase their knowledge on how to reduce malnutrition and hungry citizens. “If the average annual hunger reduction in the past 20 years continues through to 2015, the percentage of undernourishment in the developing countries would reach 12.5 percent – still above the MDG target of 11.6 percent,” the UN report said.Fighting malnutrition is very important and should not be considered as nothing. It is hard to stop but we should always put in mind that eating anything doesn’t make us a hero. Eating the right food like vegetables and food that has high nutrients does. Focusing more on children is better because it is the starting line for exploring to choose what the proper nutrients is for them and as they grow they can help lessen malnutrition because they were already given a proper nutrition education and coun
