Marikina pilots whole-grains program
By Grace Roxas, Contributing Writer
A new campaign to promote eating whole grains for breakfast is growing its first roots in Marikina. Nestle Philippines has partnered with the city government for an educational and nutrition campaign focused on young school children and mothers in the communities.
Marikina Mayor Lourdes Fernando said the campaign is an important platform for delivering key nutritional messages. "We put a high stake on nutrition as a city recognized by the World Health Organization as one of the healthiest and most liveable in the Asia Pacific. And good nutrition need not be expensive," she said during the launch of the whole-grains advocacy.
With 89 percent of the population below 30 years of age and children five to nine years old comprising the biggest age group, the city passed a number of nutrition-related ordinances that target the young. These include measures requiring that all foods sold in the city be fortified and ordinances on breast-feeding and the use of iodized salt.
The campaign extols the benefit of eating breakfast with emphasis on adding whole grains in the diet.
Speaking during the launch, former Health secretary Jaime Galvez Tan noted that based on periodic surveys conducted by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), children tend to skip breakfast more and more as they grow older.
"We should always eat like a king at breakfast, duchess at lunch, and pauper at dinner," he said. He added that a well-balanced breakfast consists of food with complex carbohydrates (e.g. whole grains), protein (beans and nuts), natural vitamins, minerals, micronutrients, antioxidants (fruits and vegetables) and healthy fat (yoghurt, cottage cheese). Local root crops such as
camote (sweet potato), gabi (taro) and ube (purple yam) are also good sources of complex carbohydrates.
FNRI's Dr. Trinidad Trinidad explained that whole grains retain the bran and germ as well as the endosperm. The bran contains fiber and trace minerals while the germ has antioxidants and vitamin E. Both bran and germ provide B vitamins. The endosperm is a repository of carbohydrates and protein.
Common whole-grain products include oatmeal, popcorn, brown rice, whole wheat, sprouted grains, and whole-wheat flour and bread.
The campaign coincides with Nestle's own move to make all its breakfast-cereal products whole grain. "Cereals overcome taste barriers so kids who eat cereals are more likely to meet requirements for daily nutrition," said Nestle global nutritionist Brigid McKevith.
She reiterated that whole-grain benefits go beyond dietary fibers. "They are nutrient dense but not energy dense and a portion that provides for 200 kilo calories addresses 25 to 40 percent of our micronutrient needs."
She cited approved health claims for whole-grain food in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden although nine out of ten people in the UK are still not getting the recommended servings of whole grains.
Corazon Sager, Nestle Philippines vice president for corporate wellness, puts the campaign in the context of the company's latest local consumer findings which includes a desire to return to real and unprocessed food products.
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Kidney transplants to foreigners halted
The Department of Health has temporarily suspended kidney transplants to foreigners, amid allegations that poor Filipinos are being duped into selling vital organs for a pittance.
Specialists-who are demanding new national regulations on transplants-say poor, jobless, and illiterate people living in the greater Manila area have become victims of an illegal kidney-harvesting network.
"Right now, all transplantations on foreign patients are deemed suspended," Health undersecretary Alexander Padilla said. "Kidney transplantation is not part of medical tourism."
The country's vascular transplant surgeons are observing a "moratorium" on kidney transplants to foreign recipients while the government works with doctors to craft new regulations, he added. Padilla said that just under 1,000 kidney transplants are performed in the Philippines annually.
But the Philippine Society of Nephrology (PSN) says the country is one of the world's "hot spots" for organ harvesting, with recipients in the West and the Middle East paying up to US$30,000 for new kidneys. It says a 10-percent cap on the number of transplants to foreign recipients, which went into effect in 2003, is regularly violated.
Between 2002 and 2005, the number of kidney transplants to foreign patients from living, nonrelated Filipino donors increased by 63 percent, according to Dr. Benita Padilla, PSN vice president.
Padilla, a distant relative of the health undersecretary, said these donors are mostly poor people with little education who live in Manila's slums, and many are jobless.
The PSN has also found "clusters" of hundreds of donors, mostly farmers, and tricycle drivers in towns southeast of Manila who received PhP112,000 from those who received their kidney "donations."
Selling or exporting human organs is punishable in the Philippines by jail terms of at least 20 years plus stiff fines.
But advocates say the organ networks operate in a gray area where local or foreign patients suffering from terminal renal failure get "donations" from nonrelatives.
"We know there's a lot of controversy over organ transplantations," Social welfare secretary Esperanza Cabral said. "The living nonrelated donors that we're talking about who donate their kidneys to foreigners and rich Filipinos for a price are the poor, vulnerable disadvantaged and marginalized."
The health undersecretary did not rule out the possibility of a full ban on transplants to foreign recipients, once the new guidelines are drafted.
M AFP
Health-cost crisis from ageing looms
PARIS
Policy-makers fretting over the costs of caring for the aged will face their greatest challenge in the next two decades, although the burden should ease toward the end of the century.
So says a study which suggests that the much-feared crisis of ageing of the world's population is already starting to bite, as the post-World War II baby boomers shuffle into retirement, inflicting a heavy hit on budgets in developed countries.
The percentage of greyheads in the world's population will increase rapidly over the next 20 years, although this acceleration will peak in different regions at different times.
Japan is already nearing the period when the proportion of ageing people in its population is starting to quickly surge.
North America, Europe, China, and the countries of the former Soviet Union will follow sometime between 2020 and 2030, according to the paper published by Nature.
South Asia will go through a decade of rapid ageing beginning in 2035, the Middle East in 2040, and sub-Saharan Africa at midcentury.
"It is really important for policy-makers to take these figures into account," said one of the authors, Warren Sanderson of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Most demographic projections fail to acknowledge nuances about how quickly a population ages, but the implications are far-reaching for health care, where costs rise dramatically toward the end of life, he said.
At present, 10 percent of the world's population is over 60; this will slowly rise to 13 percent by 2020 but leap to 17 percent by 2030. After than it will continue to climb gradually to 32 percent by 2100.
In China, the increase will quadruple, from 10 percent today to 42 percent by 2100, whereas nearly half the population in Western Europe-46 percent-will be over 60 by century's end, compared with 20 percent today, according to the study.
By these yardsticks, future generations would appear to be doomed to carrying a huge social burden.
"People look at those numbers and they get very scared, thinking that their health-care expenditures are going to explode," said Sanderson. But, he said, the biggest challenge will fall before 2030 for developed countries and by 2050 elsewhere, because so many people will age so quickly in the coming years.
Paradoxically, the health-cost crisis could be relatively easier to manage in the decades after that.
Despite the larger proportion of elderly, many of the over 60s in the latter half of this century are likely to be hale and hearty and will not need to go to the doctor. Medical care becomes most expensive in the last few years of life, and not before.
Some studies have calculated that someone who is 65 in 2100 can expect to live beyond 90.
"There are two ways to look at age: one is how many birthdays you have already had, and the other is how many you expect to have in the future," Sanderson explained.
Instead of looking at the percentage of people aged over 60-today's typical benchmark for old age-we should look at the percentage of people whose life expectancy is 15 years or less. By 2100, nearly a third will be aged over 16, but only 16 percent will be in this final, costly stage.
"Looked at this way, the figures are rather reassuring," he said.
M AFP
Poor sanitation costs $1.4B annually
Cai U. Ordinario, Business Mirror
Poor sanitation causes the Philippines to incur $1.4 billion in economic losses annually, according to the latest study conducted by the World Bank (WB).
This was among the findings of a four-country study conducted in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam under the Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI) titled Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Southeast Asia Summary. The report put the annual per capita losses in the four countries at $9.30 in Vietnam, $16.80 in the Philippines, $28.60 in Indonesian and $32.40 in Cambodia.
"Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines lose an estimated $9 billion a year because of poor sanitation [based on 2005 prices]. That is approximately two percent of their combined gross domestic product, varying from 1.3 percent in the Philippines and Vietnam to 2.3 percent in Indonesia and 7.2 percent in Cambodia," said the report.
It estimated that the Philippines' biggest economic loss is in health, estimated at $1.01 billion a year. This is followed by the economic losses recorded in water services worth $323 million; tourism, $40.1 million; and other welfare, $37.6 million.
Health resources, the report stated, contribute most to the overall losses of all four countries included in the study. Poor sanitation, including hygiene, cause at least 180 million disease episodes and 100,000 premature deaths annually.
"Poor sanitation, through its important implications for child nutritional status, is associated with higher rates of acute lower-respiratory infection (ALRI) and malaria, as well as increased mortality from a range of childhood diseases," said the report.
It showed that recent evidence highlighted the importance of indirect cases of morbidity and premature mortality. A high proportion of children under five is reported to be malnourished.
Low weight for age is reported in 36 percent of children under five in Cambodia, 28 percent in Indonesia and the Philippines, and 22 percent in Vietnam.
Episodes of ALRI attributed to poor sanitation annually exceed two million. Indirect deaths attributed to poor sanitation are in excess of 50,000 per year.
The report showed that in Cambodia there are 5,500 ALRI-related deaths; Indonesia, 26,000; the Philippines, 14,500; and Vietnam, 5,000.
"These deaths are caused by ALRI [16,000], measles [6,100], malaria [3,700], and other factors [24,000]," the report stated.
Poor sanitation also contributes significantly to water pollution, which adds to the cost of safe freshwater for households and reduces the production of fish in rivers and lakes.
M Reprinted with permission from Business Mirror
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