PUTRAJAYA, Nov 30 — The government is in the process of developing the National Children Well-Being Roadmap (NCWR) to address the issue of malnutrition among children, says Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.

Dr Wan Azizah, who is also women, family and community development minister, said the government took a serious view of malnutrition among children as raised in the Global Nutrition Report 2018 which showed Malaysia was plagued with stunted children, rising prevalence of anaemia among women and the problem of obesity.

“The government is in the process of developing the roadmap as it was aware of the issues brought up in the Unicef (United Nations Children’s Fund) Report that the problems not only involved children living in Poor People’s Housing Programme (PPRT).

“The roadmap is aimed at combating the root cause and not the symptoms. It covers basic intervention, preventive intervention and reactive intervention,” she said in a statement here today.

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Dr Wan Azizah said the issues of stunted and overweight children were raised in Children Without report by Unicef which focuses on children living in PPRT.

Apart from poverty, she said other factors which caused the situation were unhealthy lifestyle and diet.

Dr Wan Azizah said efforts to develop the roadmap was still in the process of consultations between government agencies.

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She said the next measure would be to hold consultation with various non-governmental organisations, related ministries and town hall session with the people soon.

“Consultation with the target group is important so that they are also involved in the formation of the roadmap,” she said.

Dr Wan Azizah said at the same time, the government would continue its efforts including the National Action Plan for Nutrition of Malaysia (NPANM) 2016-2025 which is the third series of NPANM launched by the Health Ministry.

“The Action Plan is a continuous commitment of the government to prevent and control nutrition problems among the people,” she said.

She said the commitment has three main objectives namely to raise the status of the people’s nutrition, reduce non-communicable diseases and ensure the availability of food.

The National Health and Morbidity Survey 2016 reported that states considered the poorest such as Kelantan recorded 34 per cent stunted children while Terengganu which is a wealthy state has 26 per cent stunted children which is the second highest in the report.

Putrajaya as the Federal Administrative Centre of the federal government surprisingly has the third highest stunted children at 24 per cent. — Bernama