Non-government organization Save the Children Philippines is urging authorities to address chronic child malnutrition as a national priority.

This, after a study by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DOST) showed that the rate of chronic malnutrition or stunting for children under five years old has grown from 30.5 percent in 2013 to 33.5 percent in 2015.

"What we've seen is really concerning. It’s the worst increase in childhood stunting in a quarter of a century," said Ned Olney, Philippine Country Director of Save the Children Fund.

Olney said the recent data is alarming amid a Philippine economy which has recorded huge gains in the recent years.

“In a two-year period of time childhood stunting has increased 10 percent, I know that it doesn’t sound a lot but that’s a huge jump, in a period of time where the country is expanding, robust growth, poverty is not going down and malnutrition is going up and it’s going up really significantly,” Olney told ANC Tuesday.

While malnutrition is expected to be rampant in rural areas, it is alarming that childhood stunting is almost as severe in urban areas where supposedly people have better access to food, said Olney.

To emphasize the magnitude of the problem, he said childhood wasting, or having a low weight for height, in the urban areas is at "almost refugee camp of malnutrition" level.

Olney said the issue of malnutrition should be of national concern as it can directly affect the level of economy in the future.

"If a child is stunted at the age of five, they've lost cognition, it means that they can't learn as much as other children who are not stunted, they're shorter as a kind of proxy indicator of stunting, but their mental ability is also stunted," he said.

"So if you have children progressing to age six and they're already stunted, that means that cannot be recuperated, it's a permanent condition. They might me able to grow a little bit if well-fed, but they won't be able to recuperate the lost cognitive capacity. So you're then gonna have a whole generation of children who are less productive, who are undereducated," he added.

Save the Children Philippines has been conducting community-based intervention programs to address the problem.

“We’re working with the municipal government of Navotas, there’s a real problem in some of the urban slams in Navotas, we were collecting data just last month on the number of wasted and severely malnourished children in Navotas,” he said.

Olney proposes for a national subsidized school lunch program, which he said has been a proven effective intervention in many countries.

“Critically important is having national subsidized school lunch program, one hot meal a day for children can solve the issues of dropouts, improve learning, keep children healthy," he said.

"But then investing in livelihoods, in farming, in making sure that poor gets the skills that they need to be able to be productive and efficient and to earn income, all of those things are really important to make a difference towards malnutrition."