CEBU CITY—The Central Visayas Regional Nutrition Cluster (CVRNC) has called on the local government units (LGUs) to activate their local nutrition clusters to prepare for possible acute food and nutrition insecurity especially among the vulnerable population.
“We don’t want to make the vulnerable groups even more vulnerable by adding in the factor of malnutrition,” said Dr. Parolita A. Mission, regional nutrition program coordinator for Central Visayas, in a news release posted on the National Nutrition Council (NNC-7) Facebook page.
The CVRNC has noted that acute food and nutrition insecurity could occur among some sectors in the coming weeks.
Noting that the resources on healthy food have run low and less accessible than usual, the CVRNC issued Regional Nutrition Cluster Advisory 1 and 2 on the local nutrition activation so these could provide nutrition in emergency service packages and prioritize susceptible populations.
The two advisories outline reminders for local government units to prevent deterioration of nutrition status of children below five years of age, pregnant and lactating women and other at-risk individuals.
These advisories enumerated the following measures to address this concern:
• Ensure that households are still able to eat healthy by including fresh produce in food packs.
• Be vigilant in monitoring and implementing EO 51 or the milk code which does not allow the donation of breast milk substitute of any kind.
• Continued services for Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition and the provision of micronutrient supplementation.
• Coordination with the agriculture sector to not only provide healthy food to the community but give farmers and fisherfolks with income during the quarantine period.
Malnutrition can cause higher susceptibility to disease and infection, including the coronavirus 2019.
To prevent this, the National Nutrition Council in Central Visayas continues to promote a healthy lifestyle in times of quarantine. With the help of local nutrition clusters, the region hopes to contain the disease as soon as possible. /rcg