More than One Million Filipino Infants to Benefit from Improved Nutrition

GAIN is investing US$ 3.8 million in the non-profit organization Nutrition Center of the Philippines (NCP) based in Manila. The investment will improve the nutrition of more than one million Filipino infants aged 6 to 24 months on a sustained basis through the development and marketing of an affordable, high quality fortified complementary food product. NCP aims to cover 14.6 percent of infants in this age group by the end of the five year project. The project began in November 2009 and is funded through October 2014.

GAIN caught up with Dr. Juan Antonio Solon, Executive Director of NCP, to find out more about the project. 

What’s the malnutrition situation like in the Philippines and what is the government’s commitment to fighting it?

According to a recent national survey, fifty-five percent of infants under one year old in the Philippines are anemic. Twenty-eight percent of children under five years old are stunted (low height for age) and 26 percent are underweight. The problem of chronic malnutrition is partly due to poor breastfeeding rates and suboptimal complementary feeding practices. It’s also hard to separate nutrition from poverty. About one third of the more than 88 million people in the Philippines live on less than US $1 per day. The Government of the Philippines has a five and ten year plan for fighting malnutrition (The Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition) and there is a designated policymaking body for nutrition that is part of the Department of Health.

How did you get involved in the fight against malnutrition?

I grew up in the world of nutrition since my father is one of the founding directors of NCP, a non-profit organization that improves infant feeding practices and provides affordable and accessible fortified complementary foods to Filipino infants aged 6 to 24 months. NCP has been developing programs for public health nutrition since 1974. I became a medical doctor and have experience in community medicine. I spent five years in the Gambia conducting immunology research in nutrition.

How are you fighting malnutrition?

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,000 islands with pockets of the country in conflict and places largely accessible only by boat. My organization, NCP, develops fortified food products including biscuits, noodles, instant cereals and milk for schoolchildren and also designs projects for local governments in community-based nutrition. We are focusing on areas in the Philippine Action Plan for Nutrition where we can have the greatest impact and avoid duplicating what’s already being done. We partner with private groups and complement government efforts. Through GAIN support, we aim to reach more than one million infants at the end of five years and to reduce anemia in infants by one third. Anemia impairs the mental capabilities and energy levels of children and can later rob them of economic opportunities.

How is GAIN supporting you?

GAIN’s investment will enable us to reformulate one of our existing products, a fortified instant cereal product called Nutri-Oats, to fit requirements for infants and ensure a safe, high quality product. GAIN is also helping us expand product marketing through selling directly to families, conduct market research to understand the feeding and buying habits of mothers and develop capacity (ie hiring marketing people and people who understand product distribution). Up until this point, mostly governments and non-governmental organizations have been purchasing our products for school feeding programs. Now we’re targeting low-income families who are often not reached by public delivery channels. GAIN opens a lot of doors and provides us invaluable technical input on product development and investment in research and development. GAIN will also help us measure the impact of our product on infants by supporting baseline, end line and other surveys to assess awareness, consumption behavior and availability of the product in local shops. NCP and GAIN are making a joint investment of US$ 13.5 million, where GAIN’s contribution is US$ 3.8 million over five years. By the end of the third year, we expect to be making sufficient revenues to sustain production. 
 
What makes you motivated to fight malnutrition?

I am motivated when I go to the field and see malnutrition for myself. In Manila, you tend to forget what malnutrition looks like. I am always amazed by how many children I see who are small for their age (stunted). I have two children three and seven years old and it always upsets me to see children like this. That’s when I see how our product can make a difference.

What’s your vision of how we can end malnutrition?

We already know the interventions that work – we just need to be able to implement them at the grassroots level. We also need to use private sector approaches (social marketing, advocacy, health promotion) to change people’s behavior. We learned from our NutriPak product, a food product for malnourished children, that strong social marketing and health education influenced the foods that mothers remembered. The product was marketed to remote villages using a fleet of buses screening videos that were staffed with nurses trained in communication for behavior change. Commitment from government and partnership with the private sector are also important ingredients to scale up interventions addressing malnutrition.

Interview by Karie Atkinson, Writer/Editor, GAIN. Email: katkinson@gainhealth.org

Photos: Nutrition Center of the Philippines