CEBU CITY -- Senator Imee Marcos started the revival of the Nutribun Feeding Program on her father’s 105th birth anniversary, with a warning that the government’s nutrition programs at present are “undernourished and will not withstand a looming global food crisis.”
Its popularity in the 70’s still inspires the local feeding programs of incumbent and aspiring politicians, but the national scale and continuity that made the Nutribun a success as a USAID-funded project during the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s time has hardly been matched by subsequent administrations, she said.
To that end, the senator joined forces with the National Nutrition Council, which her father established in 1974, and various local government units, municipal offices of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and barangay health workers.
Simultaneous pilot-testing of the Nutribun
Feeding Program took place Sunday in Rizal, Cebu, and Ilocos Norte, where 1,000
children, three to five years old, in each province received packs of the
iconic bread made with squash, malunggay (moringa), and other locally
available, high-nutrient crops.
Beyond the mere distribution of the fortified Nutribun, Marcos’s office and all government workers involved will be monitoring the children’s weight and state of health throughout the next 120 days.
Marcos’s personal initiative complements the government’s nutrition programs to be bolstered with $178 million in recent funding from the World Bank, so that the high incidence of child stunting in the Philippines can be reversed.
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