The National Nutritioin Council released recently the updated Electronic Operation Timbang Plus Tools for Large Barangays and for Community Levels and the Regular Consolidation Tools for City/Municipal Level and Province Level. For Caraga Region, tools are available for download through this link: https://nnc.gov.ph/component/phocadownload/category/10.

The eOPT Plus Tool is a tool for consolidating measurements at the Barangay Level from the Operation Timbang Plus Activityis and for the use of nutrition workers in the community to help them consolidate and summarize the results of OPT Plus among children 0-59 months old. The e-OPT Tool runs on MS Excel version 2007 or later. Full functionality of the tool requires a licensed version of MS Excel.

New features of the eOPT tool includes:

1. This update includes auto-fill of population data in the Summary worksheet as well as the auto-labelling of the Philippine Standard Geographic Code (PSGC) for each barangay. Population data (i.e. total barangay population, 0-59 months children) are from 2021 estimates obtained from the Department of Health – Epidemiology Bureau.

2. Dropdown lists for Province, Municipality/City, and Barangay names facilitate filling-up of required information. Once the barangay name is selected, the total population of the barangay and the estimated population of the 0-59 months old children are auto-filled in the ‘Summary’ worksheet.

3. The counts of mothers/caregivers of children whose nutritional status fall below normal and those with children who are overweight or obese have been included in the Summary. This counts the number of mothers/ caregivers who have at least one child affected by undernutrition, based on WFA, HFA, or WFL/H following the Child Growth Standards set by the WHO.

Note: if a mother/caregiver has more than one affected child, she/he is counted only once.

4. A count of the number of children with weight but no height measurements have been included in the Summary.

5. Additional columns have been added to highlight children 0-23 months old in the Summary table to show the total number and prevalence in each of the three nutritional status indices WFA, HFA, and WFL/H.

6. A tally of children belonging to Indigenous Peoples (IP) groups according to the nutritional status classification in each of the three indices has been added to the summary table. The total presented is also disaggregated by sex.

Operation Timbang Plus is the annual weight and height measurement done in all barangays across the country to identify the nutritional status of 0-59 months old children. It is based on the Child Growth Standards (CGS), single international standard that represents the best physiologic growth for all children from birth to five years of age. (NOI/RPO)