Malnutrition costs PHL $8.5 billion yearly — World Bank advisor

Malnutrition costs the Philippine economy about $8.5 billion (P534.1 billion), equivalent to 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), each year, underscoring the economic case for greater investment in nutrition, according to a World Bank advisor.

World Bank Senior Nutrition Advisor Cecilia Santos-Acuin said the cost of poor nutrition goes beyond individual health, affecting productivity, human capital and the country’s long-term economic development.

“Malnutrition alone costs us about $8.5 billion, or 3% of our GDP per year,” Ms. Santos-Acuin said during the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines’ (ECCP) fifth annual Nutrition Forum on Wednesday.

Poor nutrition can affect an individual’s psychological and mental capacity, which in turn affects productivity and the ability to contribute to communities and the economy, she said.

The World Bank estimates that a package of nutrition interventions would cost about $20 per mother, infant and child. For the Philippines, the investment would amount to about $1.5 billion and could generate around $35 billion in economic benefits, Ms. Santos-Acuin said.

“It’s a very good return by any measure,” she said.

Department of Education (DepEd) Director IV Miguel Angelo Mantaring said the economic implications of malnutrition are also reflected in schools, where poor nutrition can affect attendance, participation and readiness to learn.

“You cannot teach around hunger,” Mr. Mantaring said.

He said children who come to school hungry, frequently ill or nutritionally compromised do not have the same opportunity to benefit from instruction and education reforms.

“Nutrition does not teach a child how to read. A teacher does that. The learning system does that, but nutrition can remove some of the physical barriers preventing the child from benefiting fully from what the teacher is doing,” Mr. Mantaring said.

DepEd is expanding its school-based feeding program to about 4.6 million learners in school year 2026–2027, including around 1.5 million kindergarten learners and 1.8 million Grade 1 learners who will receive daily feeding.

“We are progressively expanding universal feeding in the earliest grades. So starting this school year, this means approximately 1.5 million kindergarten learners and 1.8 million grade 1 learners are benefiting from daily feeding,” Mr. Mantaring said.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) OIC Director General Franklin Anthony M. Tabaquin said nutrition also requires regulations that protect consumers while ensuring access to safe and affordable products.

“Safety and affordability should not be treated as opposing goals,” Mr. Tabaquin said.

He called for science-based and risk-based regulation, saying requirements should be proportionate to actual risks and processes should be simplified where this can be done without compromising safety, quality or consumer protection.

“Better nutrition is too important and too complex to be the responsibility of one agency or one sector alone,” he said.

Ms. Santos-Acuin said the country also needs to address fragmentation in the delivery of nutrition interventions.

“Most of the time, the problem is not that we do not know what the interventions are or we do not have it in our programs. It’s because our delivery of the interventions is very fragmented,” she said.

The World Bank, together with the Philippine government, has been implementing a Philippine multisectoral nutrition project anchored on the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition.

The project combines national and local government interventions with early childhood development and water, sanitation and hygiene programs.

Participating communities recorded a 92% exclusive breastfeeding rate, compared with 60% in the National Nutrition Survey, while antenatal care reached 82%, Ms. Santos-Acuin said.

The project also recorded 23% minimum dietary adequacy, compared with a 14% national average at the time the data were collected.

Ms. Santos-Acuin said coordinated interventions can help shift communities from a cycle of poor nutrition toward better health, productivity and economic participation. — Kaizzer Angela Marie V. Manuba