Biology students at Gadjah Mada University (S1) made another achievement at the national level by winning 1st place in the National Essay Competition. This achievement was achieved by Zildan Basara, a student at the Faculty of Biology class of 2020. This national-level essay competition was organized by the Respati Tasikmalaya STIKes Student Executive Board at an annual event, namely the Stunting Response Festival. This year, the Stunting Response Festival has the theme “One Step for Indonesia: Optimizing Zero Stunting for Golden Indonesia”. The competition was held online with 103 registrants from 79 universities, the competition opened on 16 February 2023, and the winners were announced on 23 March 2023.
In this competition, Zildan raised the title “Ensuring Healthy Child Growth to Realize Golden Indonesia: Exploring Challenges and Solutions to Optimizing Zero Stunting”. In this essay, Zildan discusses that Indonesia is one of the countries with a high prevalence of stunting in the world. According to data from the World Bank (2021), the prevalence of stunting in Indonesia in 2020 is 27.4% of the number of children under 5 years of age. This means that around 7.8 million children in Indonesia were stunted that year. This figure places Indonesia as the country with the fourth highest stunting rate in the world. This is a serious problem because stunting can have an adverse impact on children’s physical, cognitive and social development, and can affect their quality of life in the future. Therefore, overcoming stunting is one of the main priorities in achieving the vision of the Golden Indonesia.
Optimizing zero stunting is an important program in preventing stunting in children in Indonesia. This program involves various aspects such as exclusive breastfeeding, provision of complementary foods, access to clean water and good sanitation, health education for pregnant women and their families, increasing the availability of healthy and nutritious food, and community empowerment. The development of this program needs to involve various parties and be supported by supporting policies.
