Former award-winning Mandaluyong City mayor turned senatorial aspirant Benhur Abalos Jr. noted the nation is unable to remedy its ailing education system if not first attending to the major issue of malnourished children.
Abalos invoked the Philippines' low scores in international learning tests as a sign of a deeper problem. "We always get poor results in the PISA tests Math or English," he said, citing the Programme for International Student Assessment. "But we're asking the wrong question. We keep searching for better teachers or more computers. But nobody's examining what happens to the child's brain before they even step into school."
He explained that stunting caused by chronic undernutrition during the first 1,000 days of life permanently damages brain development. "Stunting shrinks the brain. Fewer synapses, fewer neural connections. It's irreversible. You can feed them well later, send them to school, give them computers but it won't fix a brain that's already been damaged during the critical first 1,000 days."
Benhur Abalos lobbies for the First 1,000 Days as priority solution to child malnutrition and educational improvement.
Government and international data support his concern. The Global Nutrition Report says 28.8 percent of Filipino children under five are stunted—well above the Asian regional average of 21.8 percent. UNICEF reports that in some regions of the country, such as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the rate of stunting is close to 40 percent.
“We’ve had brilliant education secretaries Secretary (Leonor) Briones, Brother Armin Luistro. But no one looked seriously at nutrition,” he said.
He remembered when he was the mayor of Mandaluyong City when the local government had an extensive maternal and child nutrition program over two decades ago. "We did not concentrate only on schools. We began with the mothers. Each pregnant woman was given rations—nutritional supplements, folic acid. We advocated breastfeeding. We acted early," he said.
The outcome was quantifiable, he asserted. "When we became number one in nutrition in the whole country, we made sure that the education system kept up. Then we topped the National Achievement Test. We had the country's healthiest and brightest high school students," he said.
Abalos' program brought the city numerous national awards. Between 2011 and 2013, Mandaluyong was awarded the Green Banner Award for exemplary performance in its nutrition program in Metro Manila over 16 other local governments. This showed the city qualifying for the Consistent Regional Outstanding Winner in Nutrition (CROWN) Award. After sustaining this level for three more years, Mandaluyong was awarded the esteemed Nutrition Honor Award (NHA) in 2016, which is the highest award for citywide nutrition coordination and consistent improvements in public health.
Abalos said that efforts to reform education would be futile unless nutrition is made a central part of the plan. "This has nothing to do with hiring teachers or constructing schools. If we don't tackle malnutrition, we're sending our children to fail. The damage starts before a child even opens a textbook," he said.
This is no longer a local issue. This is a national crisis. We must act immediately, because the brains we save today are the future of our nation," he said.
