Feeding program gets more budget

CEBU, Philippines — The Department of Education’s (DepEd) School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) is getting a budget of P5.97 billion in 2020 – P1 billion or 20 percent higher than this year’s P4.97 billion.

“We are all for the bigger allocation, so that the program can target and cover a greater number of underfed school children,” Anakalusugan Partylist Representative Michael Defensor said.

“This is good news to improve the nutritional status of pre-school and school children,” said Parolita Mission, regional nutrition program coordinator of the National Nutrition Council-7.

However, we also need to look into the nutrition situation of infant and young children, she said.

She added that interventions in the first 1000 days of the child’s life are crucial for the child to grow and thrive.

“Dietary supplementation for pregnant women is a good way to ensure that she will deliver a healthier baby.  But this is not budgeted as yet,” Parolita said.

She added that for children six months to two years old, age-appropriate complimentary feeding has to be strengthened, as this is the period where malnutrition doubles.

Under the SBFP, undernourished children from kindergarten to Grade 6 are given deworming tablets and fed at least one fortified meal plus doses of micronutrients in the form of pills, capsules or syrups, for at least 120 days in a school year.

“There’s no question the program has helped to improve the nutritional and overall health condition of children, apart from encouraging more of them to stay in school,” Defensor said in a statement.

The SBFP targets mostly “wasted and severely wasted” school children, or those deemed too skinny for their age.

“Right now, many school children from poverty-stricken families, even here in Metro Manila, continue to suffer from short-term hunger,” Defensor said.

Short-term hunger is “a condition experienced by children who do not eat breakfast and walk long distances to reach school.”

Defensor also said the SBFP would help ease starvation among school children from indigent households.

In its second-quarter survey conducted in late June 2019, the Social Weather Stations found that an estimated 2.5 million Filipino families experienced either “moderate” or “severe” involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months.

“The DepEd is getting better in executing the SBFP, especially after the adoption a new set of guidelines two years ago,” Defensor said.

Education Secretary Leonor Briones issued the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the SBFP for the School Years 2017-2022 last August 7, 2017.

The SBFP is one of the three national feeding programs for undernourished children institutionalized by Republic Act No. 11037, or the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act.

The two others are the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Supplemental Feeding Program for Children in Public Day Care Centers and the Department of Agriculture’s Milk Feeding Program. (FREEMAN)