This child nutrition indicator covers moderate and severe cases from 1996 to 2005. Thirty percent of the age group suffer from stunting or being too short for one’s age while six percent has been classified as wasted or dangerously thin.

According to the Department of Health, the malnutrition situation in the country has not substantially improved in the last 15 years and child malnutrition rate has remained at 30 percent level for over a decade.

The country’s leading pharmaceutical company has intensified its efforts to address this situation and help fight child malnutrition in the country.

United Laboratories, Inc. (Unilab) has organized feeding and nutrition programs that benefited some 1,500 children for the first quarter of 2006 alone. These were conducted in key cities in the country in partnership with companies, parishes, non-government and socio-civic organizations.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that developing countries like the Philippines should do far more for their undernourished children to meet a long-time United Nations goal to reduce by half the number of the world’s underweight infants by 2015. In a report, UNICEF Country Representative Dr. Nicholas Alipui disclosed that damages of malnutrition to children include lower intelligence, reduced physical capacity and passing malnutrition to the next generation.

"All these result to reduction in productivity and sluggish economic growth, which perpetuate the cycle of poverty," he said in a news report.

Realizing the urgent need for collaborative efforts to curb the growing malnutrition problem in the country, Unilab stepped up its efforts by initiating partnerships with major private corporations, parish networks and non-government and socio-civic organizations for joint feeding and nutrition programs in such areas as Valenzuela, Caloocan, Pasig, Pasay and Bulacan. These are initial activities which Unilab and its partners hope to deploy in more areas in the country to reach out to more malnourished children.

Just recently, Unilab, through its Unilab Medical Education and Development (UMED) office, organized a conference on malnutrition for over 500 healthcare professionals to discuss the state of malnutrition in the country, the current feeding practices among infants and young children, and the initiatives to help counter malnutrition. Resource persons from Nutrition Foundation of the Philippines, University of the Philippines College of Medicine and Wayne State University were invited to discuss the issues.

"We believe that as a Filipino pharmaceutical company, it is our social responsibility to help in addressing major health issues in the country, like malnutrition, using our available resources," said Unilab Chairman Jocelyn Campos Hess.

Unilab has set out to conduct more continuing medical education programs for healthcare professionals to update them on current health issues and encourage them to participate in the solution. The company has likewise targeted more partnerships with organizations for the conduct of feeding and nutrition programs in more areas this year.