LGU hunger mitigation action plan up
The Regional Anti-Hunger Task Force chaired by the National Nutrition Council (NNC) is coming up with a Compendium of Hunger Mitigation Action Plans of cities and municipalities in Western Visayas as part of its advocacy campaign with the Local Government Units and other anti-hunger stakeholders.
NNC Regional Coordinator Nona Tad-y said the task force aims to encourage LGUs to fast-track implementation of anti-hunger mitigation programs in their respective municipalities by having a workable and responsive action plans.
Tad-y said the plans should ensure the provision of local counterparts in the anti-hunger programs like the Food-for-School Program, the Gulayan Para sa Masa, the Tindahan natin and many others.
She also said that the regional task force led by the NNC and composed of about 29 agencies, with DSWD and NEDA as secretariat, would like to have a consolidated action plan which clearly addresses the problems of poverty and hunger and the factors influencing these, using the framework of MDG's goal of eradicating extreme poverty.
The MDG (millennium development goal) 1 is to reduce the proportion of population whose consumption is below minimum levels of dietary energy requirement by 2015.
The NNC identifies the major nutrition problems as Protein Energy Malnutrition, Iron Deficiency Anemia, Iodine Deficiency Disorders and Obesity.
Further, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) relates poverty and malnutrition with a host of factors that include inadequate food intake, large sized-family, poor health status, faulty food habits and practices, lack of education, and poor environmental conditions.
Ms. Tad-y said that local governments should look at hunger and malnutrition as issues with adverse consequences on development if not addressed with appropriate plans.
She added that LGUs also need to see nutrition as investment that can bring increased agricultural productivity, better wages and savings in health expenditures as well as higher returns of investment for social services. (PIA 6/ESS)