Child rights advocates happy over signing into law of First 1k Days Bill

An alliance of organizations and agencies pushing for children's rights legislation in the Philippines on Saturday expressed joy over the signing into law by the President the "First 1,000 Days" Bill.

"First 1,000 Days" Bill, now Republic Act No. 11145, seeks to expand the country's nutrition and health programs to cover children from the first day of the mother's pregnancy to their first two years.

If implemented fully, the law will provide government support to children in their first 1,000 days, a period that has been recognized by various scientific research as one of the most vulnerable and critical periods in child development.

"Now that the government has another powerful weapon in its arsenal to protect and nurture the welfare of children, we call on the government to fully maximize this law that provides an essential tool to protect children and their mothers from getting malnourished or sickly during the critical period of first 1,000 days," the Child Rights Network (CRN) said in a statement.

"There could be no better way to extend the government’s mantle of social protection than to focus on the first 1,000 days of child development. Such focused government support will ensure that proper nutrition, care, and medical needs are given to those who urgently need it at the most pressing time," it added.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 5.9 million children under 5 years old worldwide die due to malnutrition.

Data from the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) gravely complements this WHO figure, with the agency disclosing that almost one in three Filipino children aged 0-2 are marked as malnourished in 2013. —Jessica Bartolome/LBG, GMA News