Poor nutrition during pregnancy causing Filipino kids’ ‘brain stunting’: health department

MANILA – The most common health risk affecting pregnant women in the Philippines is the lack of proper nutritional support, which affects the growth and brain development of babies, Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa said on Thursday.

“If they are not able to gain weight, the baby won’t grow. That leads to underweight children, which can also result in premature delivery and other complications,” he said at a press conference.

Herbosa made the statement as he stressed the importance of giving children proper nutrition during their first 1,000 days of life — from conception until age 2 — to prevent stunting, both in the body and in the brain.

“One in four Filipino children have brain stunting,” he said. “They are short, and their brain function is not good enough, so they have learning difficulties in school.”

“My problem is that 30 percent of women who get pregnant are below 18 years old. This is hidden — it’s an unplanned pregnancy — and it also leads to undernourished or underweight children. So they’re already stunted,” Herbosa noted.

Based on the 2023 National Nutrition Survey by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology, 23.6 percent of children under 5 years old are stunted, while 15.1 percent are underweight.

The same report also found that 19.1 percent of pregnant women are nutritionally at risk of delivering low-birth-weight infants.

“Even if we improve the education system, if your brains are stunted, you will still not be good learners. You will still have learning difficulties,” Herbosa said.

To address the problem, the Department of Health (DOH) is partnering with a coalition of nonprofit organizations and the Knights of Rizal to implement a program in which pregnant women from indigent households will be given a glass of milk a day to ensure proper nourishment.

The program will be implemented in the City of Manila, with Herbosa saying the initiative will be expanded to other areas if it proves effective.

“Brain stunting is a nutrition problem, but this nutrition problem is because of poverty,” Dr. Michael Raymond Aragon, a member of the Knights of Rizal and the Children’s First 1000 Days Coalition, said at the same briefing.

He noted that 80 percent of the population falls below the poverty line. “So if mothers and families have no money to buy nutritious food, we will have a problem in the first 1,000 days of life,” he said.

Aragon also lamented that government feeding programs mostly target school-age children who are already at least 5 years old, failing to address the lack of nutrition during the first 1,000 days.

“After 2 years old, brain stunting is permanent. After that age, even if you give a truckload of nutrition to a malnourished child, the brain is already malformed. You condemn the child to a life of low IQ and stunting,” he said. /jpv