Alarm as 1 in 10 Children in W. Java Found Undernourished
March 30, 2011
A malnourished child being cared for by a nurse at an ICU in Pekanbaru, Riau. (Antara Photo/Fachrozi Amri) Related articles
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432415In 2007, WFP reported that in Bogor alone, malnutrition rate among children reached 25 percent. That was shocking, because Bogor is not Papua or NTT. Bogor lies one hour away from the capital and poverty rate was far under many other places in Indonesia.
Malnutrition is not just a matter of poverty. You may be surprised that a lot of young executive in Jakarta may suffer from hidden hunger. They feed their body with lots of food every day, but intake of all nutrition needed is not well represented. They eat almost the same food every week. As a result some nutrition intakes are too high and some others are too low.
Nutritious food is not expensive, junk food are. If children are able to spend 500 rupiah on snack, I am convinced that the parents can afford nutritious food. People in rural areas are living surrounded by nutritious food. Indonesia tremendous biodiversity are the source of nutrition for all. Unfortunately we tend to think western foods are better and we leaved what the nature has provided for us. Nutritionists should be aware of this and shift to food based and nature based nutrition strategy.
didikarjadi:
Corruption, inevitably is their second nature. I mean, at ALL levels.
Show me a department from the Government or Quasi Government body that is honest. If anybody can find one, then I'll make the shark be a vegetarian.
Roland, this comes truly from the heart. Well done, you and your dear wife.
Oh how I wish there can be many many more like you. It would really make this country at least, a better place to live in.
I once had a notion that this country does not want the down and under to grow intelligent, well fed and secured for a very obvious reason. Perhaps this might be true. Somehow they feel that it's better to have a fair percentage of the populace to be in the poor and needy category. I sincerely hope this is not true and I am wrong.
@Valkyrie: I feel that there is a direct link to this problem, as with so many others, to corruption.
You are right, the government generally do-not care, and it is because the wrong people are in place. A great number enter politics for the wrong reasons. Many in government are there for financial gain, and little else. There are too few in government because they have a genuine desire to be in public service.
This appalling situation with children being malnourished; parents lacking parental skills; generally low educational levels; little or no family planning education, and of course poverty, are directly related to bad government and corrupt politicians.
This is exactly why corruption is an extraordinary crime against humanity and why sentences need to be far harsher. When the deterrent against corruption matches the crime, and a few of the criminals in government end up in prison for life, maybe, just maybe, we can start to see a new and better pubic servant coming through.
This country has no soul.
Greed and dishonesty are destroying the country and the answer is not religion or more mosques.
That is the problem not the solution.
More needed to be done to help redress an estimated 15,000 children in West Java who were malnourished and a further 400,000 who were undernourished, a health official said on Monday.
Netty Prasetiani Heryawan, head of the Family Welfare Movement (PKK), said the figures represented 11 percent of West Java’s 3.7 million children.
She blamed the problem on several factors, including poverty, low purchasing power, poorly educated parents, bad parenting and low-nutrition diets.
“Our observations show that changing eating habits and social structures have resulted in poor parental guidance of children’s diets,” Netty said.
“In effect, parents believe that letting their children eat fast food is good because it’s more expensive than home-cooked meals, but there’s very little nutritional value in fast food.”
Aside from the growing penchant for fast food in urban areas, nutritional problems are also rife in low-income rural areas, where families cannot afford nutritious food, Netty said.
“What we’re doing now is getting PKK officials to educate parents about the need for better nutrition,” she said.
She added that efforts to combat malnutrition over the past two years included boosting food stocks in the nine districts with high malnutrition rates and compiling a database of affected children so that health officials could check on them periodically.
Nurkukuh, a nutrition expert at Diponegoro University’s School of Medicine in Jepara, Central Java, said it was important for health authorities to promote preventative programs to tackle malnutrition before it became a widespread problem.
“The government needs to be proactive in anticipating the problem of malnutrition, not reactive,” Nurkukuh said.
“Malnutrition isn’t a disease, it’s a state of health that is determined fully by the quality and quantity of the food consumed.”
Nurkukuh suggested that a campaign to promote better diets and eating habits should start at the village level, backed up by local community health centers, or puskesmas.
The primary target audience for such a campaign, he said, should be mothers with infants, followed by married men.
He also suggested using existing health-care campaigns, such as the free monthly service to weigh and measure young infants, to help spread the message about proper nutrition.
Nurkukuh said it was also important to promote breast-feeding, as many cases of malnutrition occurred among children below the age of 5.
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