MAKATI Mayor Abigail Binay has expressed concern over the rising number of overweight children in the city, particularly preschoolers, and supported the recent launch of the “Homemakers and Wellness Kiddie Class & Cooking Demonstration” to teach parents how to prepare healthier meals for their kids.
“Over nutrition should be a cause for concern as much as malnutrition. We should break the misconception that a fat child is ‘healthy’ because we are encouraging improper eating habits. Overweight children can develop diseases at an early age and we parents must do something about this. Our focus should be health first for our young Makatizens,” Binay said.
On June 22 the Makati Health Department (MHD) kicked off its Homemakers and Wellness Kiddie Class & Cooking Demonstration program at the Guadalupe Viejo Health Center.
Parents of overweight preschool children from the community were given cooking demonstrations as well as a workshop on nutritious meal planning for the family.
The activity also included dancercise sessions to focus on incorporating more physical activities for the kids to prevent the onset of lifestyle diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular problems.
According to the MHD, the city has a 2.69 percent over nutrition rate for 2017 or 1,574 overweight children out of 57,509 students. In 2016 the over nutrition rate was only 2.02 percent or 1,254 out of 62,079 students enrolled.
The city’s nutrition program has been very successful in curbing malnutrition among children between 2 and 6 years old. There were only 315 underweight children in 2017 and 297 in 2016.
However, Binay stressed that healthful eating habits and an active lifestyle must be taught early in life. She explained that kids who grow up eating nutritious food and exercising would grow up to be health-conscious adults.
The Homemakers and Wellness Kiddie Class project will be rolled out to all barangay health centers by October. The program was launched at Barangay Guadalupe Viejo, which is incidentally the most outstanding in its cluster for innovative projects for children.
The 30 child participants were prescreened during the barangay wide weighing and the participants were identified as overweight or obese. Their parents and caregivers were asked to attend the lecture and workshops on nutrition and food preparation.
The children’s progress will be monitored monthly at the health center. Apart from eating more nutritious food and refraining from junk foods and sweets, the children are also encouraged to integrate more physical activities in their daily routine, such as walking, jogging, or biking and helping in the household chores.
Aside Operation Timbang, a regular weighing activity to monitor a child’s weight, the city Nutrition Office is also conducting micronutrient supplementation, nutrition information and education, micronutrients supplementation, center-based feeding and dry rationing, and emergency food assistance for families with cases of underweight children.
Through its health and nutrition programs, complemented by its community-based breastfeeding advocacy, Makati has successfully reduced its malnutrition prevalence rate over the years. From 7.7 percent in 1990, it has gone down to 0.55 percent to date.
The city also boasts of being a recipient of the Nutrition Award, the highest acknowledgement from the National Nutrition Council.
In July 2017 Makati was granted the Seal of Child Friendly Local Governance by the Department of the Interior and Local Government–National Capital Region.
Makati became the country’s pioneer in the promotion of the Community-Based Breastfeeding Advocacy in 2005 when it launched the pilot program in Barangay Pembo in collaboration with the WHO, Unicef and the Center for Health Development for Metro Manila.
In 2013 the city established the country’s first community-based Human Milk Bank at the Bangkal Health Center. Thousands of milliliters of breast milk collected from breastfeeding donors have been pasteurized in the milk bank, benefiting not only infants at Ospital ng Makati and other private hospitals, but also infants and toddlers in calamity-stricken localities.