The Department of Education (DepEd) in Negros Oriental said it targets to feed a total of 34,465 learners for its school-based feeding program for school year 2025-2026.

During Wednesday’s Kapihan sa PIA forum, Melanie Mae Austero, program coordinator, said this school year, the program will cover all kindergarten and non-graded learners not included in the previous years.

Non-graded learners are those enrolled in Special Education (SPED) programs not following the traditional grading system due to various needs.

Grades 1 to 6 learners who are “wasted” and “severely wasted” were the target beneficiaries of the feeding program in the past.

Child wasting refers to a child who is too thin for his or her height and is the result of recent rapid weight loss or the failure to gain weight.

Austero said the DepEd has allocated around PHP 112 million for the feeding program.

In the previous school year, 22,000 learners out of the total 179,000 were identified as wasted and severely wasted and benefited from the feeding program.

Meanwhile, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Liland Estacion said the province’s stunting rate is at 9.2 percent.

She said this is a result of concerted efforts to bring down the undernutrition rate of the province.

“We have a stunting rate of 9.2 percent, and this is not really high compared to the national stunting rate of 30 percent,” Estacion said. “Every year our stunting rate is decreasing.”

She said that for wasting (weight versus age), the province recorded 2.3 percent, while underweight is at 4.9 percent.

Records at the Provincial Health Office showed that Guihulngan City topped the list with the highest prevalence of children underweight (weight for age) and stunting (length/height for age) while Mabinay town ranked first with the most number of wasting (weight for length/height) in 2024. (PNA)