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Stark Treadmill
Before the covered basketball court's tv, the "tambourine brigade” watched footage of Manny Paquiao trashing Miguel-Cotto. These kids whack flattened bottle caps to accompany off-key carols. They cadge coins from passers-by. The Las Vegas fight had little to do with skewed chances that their next Christmas could be better. The 7th National Nutrition Survey and the World Food Summit in Rome dealt with that. “What’s that?”, they asked. The 5th and 6th surveys documented savaging of this country’s children and breast-feeding mothers. The Food and Nutrition Research Institute’s 7th survey concludes: chronic hunger keeps ajar floodgates to TB, blindness from Vitamin A deficiency to anemia. Our politicians mumble vague promises to end this scourge as 2010 nears. “The poor cannot eat promises,” the Rome meeting also heard. Delegates recalled that the 1974 and 1996 summits failed to deliver on State Secretary Henry Kissinger’s goal: No man, woman and child will go to bed hungry within a decade. For the first time in history, over a billion men, women and children lack food, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf said. The 2007 and 2008 food riots, in 22 countries, underscore the danger. The G8 Summit, which met in L'Aquila , Italy, anted up only half the $40 billion needed to jack up food harvests. More than half of that is not new money, Reuters pointed out. “Plenty sits still. But hunger is a wanderer “In the 21st century, a major dynamic will be the flow of human capital. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo stressed: at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. She didn't need to say driven by need. Nutrition adequacy here barely budged from cellar-levels of 2003 or 2005. “There are more undernourished children and nutritionally at-risk pregnant and lactating women today” than there were six years ago,” the survey found. Out of every hundred pre-schoolers, 26 are underweight. Another 28 were stunted. And six were thin. “A significant increase in the proportion of underweight (24.6% to 26.2%) and under height (26.3% to 27.9%) among preschoolers was noted.” Scrub the jargon. That means more kids, below 5, are emaciated, shorter, skinnier. The most crucial period, for infants is while they’re in the womb, up to age 5. If mothers get adequate pre-natal care, chances improve for babies to mature. Fewer scrunch into dwarfs, “Many of the things we need can wait,” Nobel Laureate Gabriel Mistral wrote. “The child can not wait. Now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood made, his sinews developed. To him, we can not say: tomorrow. His name is today.” PEM or protein energy malnutrition, in fact, sends far too many Filipino pre-school children to premature graves, ADB and World Bank said in their previous study: “Early Child Development." But proportions of Filipino infants who die are larger than in poorer countries like Bangaldesh, Kenya or Tanzania . That is the real–and glossed--over-scandal. The proportion of “nutritionally at-risk” (i.e ill-fed) pregnant women hasn’t shrunk, the new study reports. In fact, the number inched up (1.7%). The 6th Survey already found four out of ten, who breast-fed then, were anemic. Six out of 10 infants, up to a year old, were–Surprise! Anemic. By age 3, many infants are stunted, Asian Development Bank notes. This stark proportion dwindles, in five years, down to one or two infants. Some will have died. But irreversible damage will have been inflicted by the survivors. They’re swept, willy-nilly into a grim treadmill: Today’s ill-fed will give birth to wizened infants. In turn, they’ll mother the next generation of dwarfed babies. “(The small mother’s) risk of dying in pregnancy is 10 times greater than a woman of normal height or weight.”. Ill-fed kids are deprived from “10 to 14 percent of their potential intelligence quotient (IQ), the ADB study said. Scientists dub this “cognitive deficits”. That is “mental capacity missing a few buttons on the remote control.” Cognitive loss is 10 percent for stunted kids. For iodine-deficient victims, the deficit can crest at four percent. That loss can never be recovered.” Up to their often earlier graves, these children will be boxed into lives far below God-given potentials. Will our kids be scrawnier, shorter, frailer–and less adept –than their Malaysian, Korean or Singaporean counterparts? Yes, if our officials persist in greed. “Pork embedded in the (public works departments) alone in 2009 amounted to P19.6 billion,” Philippine Human Development Report notes. Avarice will deny our kids and their mothers the needed care and resources. One item--clean water--can reduce infant deaths by 23 percent. Growth in political fortunes, in contrast, dwarf improvement in nutrition. Consider Pampanga Rep Juan Miguel Arroyo’s net worth: It bolted from P5 million in 2002 to P99 million last year. Just like Mama. But “prevalence of underweight” women, who breast-fed, dwindled by less than one percentr (13.9% to 13.1%,) Anybody hear their whimpers? Or those from the “Tambourine Brigade”? “Do you hear the children crying. O my brothers ‘Ere sorrows come with the years? Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com |
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