A ‘high public health concern’

The Philippines has a huge public health crisis in its hands, with a new nutrition survey revealing that one in four Filipino children aged 5 years and below are stunted.

The 2025 survey of the Department of Technology’s Food and Nutrition Research Institute released this week found that stunting in this age bracket has risen to 25.3 percent, a rate the World Health Organization (WHO) considers a “high public health concern.” Without timely intervention, the country could see a quarter of this generation not living up to their full potential as adults.

This comes after more than a decade of improvement: from 33.4 percent in 2015, it has steadily declined to 23.6 percent in 2023. The 1.7 percent hike raises questions about what happened: Did the government become complacent, or were the interventions not enough?

The Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) warned that this could worsen the country’s learning crisis, giving way to a new generation of Filipino children whose learning difficulties could affect their performance in school and impact their employment prospects later in life. The problem of stunting, after all, does not only manifest in physical growth, i.e., height, but in cognitive or mental development as well.

Economic productivity

“Stunting is the result of long-term nutritional deprivation, and often results in delayed mental development, poor school performance and reduced intellectual capacity. In turn, this affects economic productivity at the national level,” said the WHO. It warned that children who suffer from growth retardation due to poor diet or recurrent infections tend to face greater risk for illness and death.

In 10 years, these stunted children will be in their final year of junior high school and are already legally qualified for nonhazardous jobs in retail or food service. In 13 years, they would have finished senior high school, and in about 17 years they would have graduated from college. However, without receiving the proper nutrition and health support, none of them will be able to reach any of those levels.

This is alarming because 75 percent of Filipino students were already considered low performers in mathematics, science, reading, and creative thinking in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment. A World Bank report the same year also found that nine in 10 Filipinos could not read and understand a simple age-appropriate text at age 10.

Not functionally literate

In addition, an Edcom 2 analysis also found that the highest-achieving Filipino students are only comparable to the average students in countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and Vietnam, and to the weakest students in Singapore. Then there is the worrying number of Filipinos who are not functionally literate. Per the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey, 19 million Filipinos aged 10 to 64 years, regardless of highest grade completed, were considered functionally illiterate because of the lack of comprehension skills—meaning they do not have the literacy necessary to handle most jobs and many everyday situations.

Sen. Bam Aquino, chair of the Senate committee on basic education, said the learning crisis cannot be solved without addressing the root: the lack of proper nutrition. Aquino has authored Senate Bill No. 2272, which seeks to expand the national nutrition program by introducing amendments to Republic Act No. 11307 or the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act.

“One in four Filipino children do not reach their full potential. They will carry the lifelong burden of undernutrition … the lack of nutrition serves as a barrier to effective learning for Filipino students,” Aquino said last Wednesday during his sponsorship speech.

Universal feeding

SB 2272 adopts a life-stage approach to combating malnutrition, from pregnancy and infancy through toddlerhood, elementary school, and adolescence, ensuring that children receive appropriate support throughout their formative years. It also provides universal feeding for public school learners from kindergarten to Grade 3, considered critical years when children develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills.

The House of Representatives has passed its counterpart measure on third reading last June 3 before adjourning sine die. But due to the Senate leadership dispute, the upper chamber has only managed to pass SB 2272 on second reading during this week’s one-day special session. Lawmakers must act with haste to get this to the bicameral level as soon as possible.

Unless the goal is to keep poor Filipinos ignorant so they won’t develop critical thinking and continue electing inept, incompetent, and corrupt politicians, the government cannot just stand by and watch generations suffer from the lingering impacts of malnutrition and learning disabilities. It must provide all the necessary support to ensure a healthy population that will not be left behind by their global counterparts.

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