The National Nutrition Council released recently the updated Electronic Operation Timbang Plus Regular Tools for Large Barangays and for Community Levels and for the Acute Malnutrition Tools for Large Barangays and Community 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 Activities 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:

• This update now 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 DOH - Epidemiology Bureau estimates for 2021.

• The counts of mothers/caregivers of children classified as having undernutrition as well as overweight and obesity have been included in the Summary. This counts the number of mothers/caregivers who have at least one child whose nutritional status falls below the lower cut-offs for normal WFA, HFA, or WFL/H and those who have children classified as overweight or obese (WFA or WFL/H). These counts are intended to help LGUs in nutrition program planning.

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

• A count of the number of children with either the weight or height measurement missing or those with incomplete information has been included in the Summary. For 'incomplete information', this reflects the number of children who are missing any of the following: home address, name of mother/caregiver, IP status, sex, date of birth, or date of measurement. To help users in spotting the children with missing details in the 'Nut_StatusTool', the name is flagged with a gray colored cell in the 'Child Seq.' column (Column A). Also,iIf any of these information (except for home address) are not filled in, this will result in non-appearance of the child's nutritional status.

• Additional columns have been added for 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.

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

• Nutritional Status Calculator. By typing in the child's weight and height, as well as the date of birth and the date of measurement, the tool quickly calculates a child's age in months and auto-generates the nutritional status. The classification is based on the WHO Child Growth Standards for the three indices weight for age, height for age, and weight for length/height. After all the children's measurements are taken, these are recorded then later fed into the tool by the nutrition worker or others in a local facility with access to a computer. This automatic feature is intended to make it quicker for nutrition workers to collect and interpret the measurements of many children in the community. This could also lessen the chances of errors compared with the previous approach where -- after each child's measurements are taken -- the nutrition worker had to manually look up each child's nutritional status from three kinds of printed reference tables, write down each result in a recording sheet, and repeat the process for all children visited.

• Updatable Database. The need for re-typing all the names of preschool children in the barangay and entering their details after every annual OPT Plus activity can be avoided, as the e-OPT Tool Template can just be updated, exported, renamed, and saved into a new file every year, or as often as needed.

• Lists of affected children are auto-generated. The tool was designed to make tabulation and report preparation by nutrition workers less tedious and more timely. This feature is expected to significantly lessen the amount of time previously spent by nutrition workers in preparing OPT Plus reports using the old paper-and-pen method. It also lessens the chances for manual calculation errors and discrepancies during the tabulation of summary results. With faster turnaround time, children found to have moderate and severe malnutrition in any of the three indices are can now be identified and listed separately so that these children can be prioritized, visited or referred, and given appropriate treatment or support by the LGU. The lists of affected children generated by the tool can also be copied and transferred to another MS Excel worksheet. This allows users to create more detailed or customized monitoring formats depending on the needs of health and nutrition workers in the locality.

• Adaptable for use in small or large barangays. The tool has a capacity of 1000 child entries. For barangays with more than 1000 preschool children (i.e. 0-59 months old), users can also apply this tool for smaller parts of the barangay such as Puroks, Blocks, or Areas. The data from the sub-part of the barangay can then be aggregated and summarized as a single file using another e-OPT Tool that consolidates the barangay data (e-OPT Tool 1A - 'e-OPT Tool for Large Barangays').

• Avoids double-counting of children. During community surveys, names of children can be inadvertently included in the OPT list more than once. To avoid errors in tallying and reporting the data, the tool has been set up to automatically exclude duplicate names and the numbers from these repeated entries are not included in the totals in the summary results. Once these names are validated to be from one individual child, users can then just delete the repeated names later when they clean or update the master list of children in their community.

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. #RPOchavo