REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The government has allocated Rp60 trillion to overcome childhood stunting caused by chronic malnutrition.

"Almost 12 ministries and institutions were involved in the efforts to overcome stunting, and the total budget from these 12 ministries and institutions could reach Rp60 trillion," Coordinating Minister for Human Resource Development and Culture Puan Maharani said here Wednesday.

The minister made the statement after a meeting of the National Team for Acceleration of Poverty Alleviation (TNP2K) led by Vice President Jusuf Kalla, to discuss efforts to overcome childhood stunting.

Previously, the government had named 50 districts and cities as the target of programs to tackle the problem of childhood stunting. However, the number of districts has increased to 100 and the program would run from 2017 to 2019.

"The point is how to synergize all the programs, which currently run separately. We have asked Bappenas (the National Development Planning Board) to put the programs in its planning, thus these 100 districts could become pilot projects," Puan added.

Meanwhile, Health affairs Minister Nila F Moeloek said the government has set a target to reduce further cases of stunting.

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has set the target below 20 percent. Actually, some regions have reduced stunting cases, but there are 100 locations, which recorded relatively high cases due to several problems such as lack of clean water access and sanitation. Therefore, we are jointly working on this," Moeloek said.

Stunting is the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. Children are defined as stunted if their height-for-age is more than two standard deviations below the WHO Child Growth Standards median.

Stunting in early life, particularly in the first 1,000 days from conception until the age of two, has adverse functional consequences on the child. Some of those consequences include poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, lost productivity and, when accompanied by excessive weight gain later in childhood, an increased risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases in adult life.

A research of the Health Ministry in 2013 showed that about 37 percent or less than nine million children in Indonesia suffered from stunting. 

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