Mongaya: Pushing breastfeeding and nutrition

Sunday, December 11, 2011

PANGLAO, Bohol—I missed the first day of a supposedly two-day tour of breastfeeding and nutrition project in Bohol with members of the Media Information Network for Nutrition and Development (Mind) 7.

The trip, which was facilitated by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the National Nutrition Council (NNC) 7, took members of Cebu media and bloggers around different lactation stations and supplemental feeding activities in different Bohol towns. Thanks, Mel and Susan.

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Yet the second day destinations were enough to give me a sense of progress in this advocacy since I first read in the early 80s about the harm wrought by baby milk formulas.

Today, provinces like Bohol have malls with lactation stations where customers, employees, and stall personnel can take babies for breastfeeding. At the Bohol Quality mall, nurses and midwives belonging to an organization of midwives man the lactation stations for free.

Of course, there is something in it for the mall. Customers with babies can now spend a longer time shopping. The midwives, likewise, had quality time demonstrating their expertise, thus generating word of mouth for their professional services. But this arrangement makes the lactation station functioning and sustainable. This situation is a far cry from those advocacy days that involved agitation against milk companies.

Still, the cultural influence of decades of being bombarded with pro-milk formula advertisements refuses to die.

A nurse volunteer narrated that one irate customer accused the mall of being biased.

She demanded that the mall also put up a bottle-feeding station.

Carmen Mayor Conchita delos Reyes, meanwhile, stressed that her health and nutrition programs went hand in hand with the local government’s tourism thrust. Note that Carmen, a crossroad in central Bohol, is the location of the world famous Chocolate Hills.

Thus, aside from getting the whole town population involved in her tourism initiatives, we visited a barangay hall filled with mothers and kids who just graduated from a workshop program involving nutrition and beastfeeding.

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Is Visayas Assistant Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago somebody that we could describe as “way pabor-pabor” like DOJ’s Leila de Lima or is she more like Chief Justice Renato C. Corona?

Emails from followers of Rep. Boy Radaza complained that while Santiago dismissed the complaint regarding the purchase of computers worth P100,000 in Cebu City, she pursued the complaint on the purchase of computer stations in Pangan-an, Lapu-Lapu City worth P49,000.00.

She even had the audacity of saying the computers were not used because there is no electricity in the island. News items way back in 2005 when Santiago inspected the computers mentioned the presence of a generator set that went along with the computers.

Members of the Cebu media (I was with the group then) also visited Pangan-an years later to see the island’s solar power system. And we also saw the computers housed in an air-conditioned school building complete with a generator set. The residents told us that the computers were used by students during school days.

While Santiago is vocal on the computer issue in Mactan, lawyer Kit Enriquez wondered why the Office of the Ombudsman had been silent about the antique cannon brought to the house of then Mayor Tomas Osmena in 2003.

Way pabor-pabor?

Perhaps, Malacañang initiatives to put our justice system in order should also look into the situation of the Ombudsman’s office in the provinces.

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Fellow Bosconian Class 77 Loven Fernandez asked me in Facebook why I still haven’t written about President Noynoy Aquino’s apparent dig at Chief Justice Corona during a public event. Many say the president’s comment was uncalled for. I think, sooner or later, somebody as prominent as President Aquino should point out the SC bias favoring former president Arroyo
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Chief Justice Corona and the rest of the SC majority should now cut their umbilical cords to Arroyo who appointed them. Their problem is not the executive department, but the credibility of our justice system. Would they have this credibility problem had their decisions not been consistently pro-Arroyo since the start of the Aquino administration? I don’t think so.

President Aquino, on the hand other hand, had been consistent with his campaign promise of going after corruption, especially the really big cases that emerged during the Arroyo administration. But while he has gone after corruption, he has still to show that this will translate to effective programs to eliminate poverty. He has not yet delivered his full promise of “Kung Walang Kurap, Walang Mahirap.” The programs I saw in Bohol that addressed poverty have still to snowball into a massive movement that mobilizes the whole government structure not only in pilot areas.

As this developed, President Aquino now has to deal with an increasingly growing impatient youth sector and workers. Meeting this impatience with police brutality erodes his credibility as the son of two heroes of Philippine democracy.

(www.inbetweencolumns.wordpress.com)