The World Bank yesterday approved a $178.1 million loan to support the Philippines’ efforts to combat malnutrition, the multilateral agency said in its latest statement.
The World Bank said the Philippines Multisectoral Nutrition Project will support the delivery of nutrition and health care services at the primary care and community levels to help reduce stunting, characterized by prolonged nutritional deficiency among infants and young children, in 235 municipalities known to have high incidence of poverty and malnutrition.
“The persistence of high levels of childhood undernutrition in the Philippines, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, could lead to a significant increase in inequality of opportunities in the country,” said Ndiamé Diop, World Bank country director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.
This project will deliver a package of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions across the various local government unit (LGU) platforms together with a social behavior change and communications interventions.
The project will also support behavioral change campaigns for targeted households and communities to adopt behaviors crucial to improving nutrition outcomes for women and children, including hand washing with soap at critical times; improved sanitation and access to safe drinking water; early child-care and development; nutrition-focused child-care development activities and promoting access to the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
Anchored in the Department of Health’s Universal Health Coverage initiative, the project will provide performance-based grants to LGUs, linked to delivery of pre-defined nutrition, maternal and child services, and improvements in local level planning and budgeting for nutrition projects to encourage implementation of these nutrition interventions through the country’s primary health care system.
The World Bank also said in its statement the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict is likely to exacerbate the food and nutrition security of vulnerable Filipino households.
“Globally, food prices, already on the rise since the second half of 2020, have reached an all-time high in February 2022, leading to food security problems around the world. These events indicate that unless immediate action is taken, millions of Filipino children will face the increased risk of undernutrition and likely suffer the consequences of poor school performance and low adult productivity,” the World Bank said. Angela Celis
