Bohol thinks of an innovative mineral fortification program

STRUGGLING along with poverty and similar poor man's diet spread across every table, Bohol now walks into another novel move: reliving a successful tie-up with the civil sector in food fortification program as a proactive response to disease prevention. With the salt fortification program making rounds in family tables, a new mineral fortification program for is in the offing, this after formalizing a deal with the company that signed an Agreement with the Department of Health to run a mineral fortification program based at the Provincial Health Office.

One with the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's national Healthy lifestyle advocacy campaign as embodied in Presidential Proclamation 958, and the DOH's efforts to answer to the issue of mineral deficiency disorders, the new campaign goes quite a long way. Dr. Linus Pauling, a nobel prize winner earlier said every disease traces to mineral deficiency of sorts.

In 2003 health survey, it shows that 90% of Filipinos carry health risks related to unhealthy lifestyle and mineral deficiency. Projected with the high cost of hospitalization, the awareness campaign for the mineral fortification comes to the fore, says Johnny Khong Hun, President of Salinas Foods Inc. A long exposure to mineral deficiency causes the most of non-communicable diseases, among the top ten death causing diseases in the country, presses Khong Hun over Kapihan sa PIA, Thursday.

Khong Hun's company is bringing to trend a mineral supplement through the Nigari drops, a catalyst for all vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and fats to be taken by the body. Provincial Health Officer Rey Moses Cabagnot earlier hinted mineral enriched food given at the government owned hospitals across the province. This would be neatly dropped in the hospital diets. And in its efforts to liberally sprinkle the mineral drops, Bohol Association of Water Refillers (B-AWARE) is finalizing the deal for a Nigari fortified patak center, where people get affordable mineral supplement in bottled water, says Khong Hun.

Sold now in vials of about 600 drops, Nigari, a Philippine made product out of Japanese technology is a Bureau of Food and Drugs accredited supplement that has made mineral access easy and affordable. With P1 or P2 drops of the Nigari in poor man's diet where minerals may not be present, this most affordable way to prevent diseases should make Local Government Units look at the prospect more closely now, said Khong Hun.

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