Child malnutrition cost the Philippines $7 billion or nearly 3% of its GDP in one year in terms of education spending and lost productivity, while hunger-related stunting is on the rise among children, a global aid agency said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. A report by ‘Save the Children’ found that the combined losses, calculated with data from 2013, are more than triple the cost of damage inflicted by 15 natural disasters that hit the Southeast Asian country last year. “Stunting costs are a drag on the economy and impacts all of us, not just the child and the family. It keeps the Filipino economy poorer by 3%. If you add that up over time—it’s an anchor to progress,” said Ned Olney, head of Save the Children in the Philippines, by Skype from Manila. The report, citing government data, said that after 25 years of steady improvement, the prevalence of stunting among Filipino children under five increased to 33% in 2015 from 30% in 2013. “That’s a 10% increase in a two-year period, so that is devastating. We’re going in the wrong direction,” Olney said.
