On 31 March 2021, the National Nutrition Council Region IX (NNC9) conducted the 1st Joint Meeting of Regional Federations with Nutrition Action Officers (NAOs), Nutrition Program Coordinators (NPCs), and Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNSs) thru a virtual meeting using the Google meet. The meeting aims to provide updates on the new e-OPT Plus tools for acute malnutrition and the regular e-OPT tool, the updated MELLPI Pro and its tool, and the Tutok kainan Guidelines. The event was spearheaded by Nutrition Officer III (NO III) Elton Pelegrino in lieu of the Regional Nutrition Program Coordinator Nimfa Ekong due to important matters of most significance to be attended to. NO III Pelegrino was joined by other NNC9 technical staff, namely NO II Joanna Marie Baltazar, NO I Cielo Katrina Mabalot, and NO I Zhalimar Patulada. The meeting was participated by P/C/MNAOs, D/C/MNPCs, and BNSs of Region IX.
During the meeting, NO III Pelegrino discussed this year's nutrition month theme “Malnutrisyon Patuloy na Labanan, First 1000 days Tutukan'' concentrating on the first 1000 days of life to prevent undernutrition, most especially stunting, and overnutrition that requires LGU mobilization with interventions to scale up nutrition. He also mentioned the position statement of NNC “By working together, we can end all forms of malnutrition”. This statement encourages all stakeholders, nutrition partners and all people as a whole to work together in solving the problem of malnutrition as this concern cannot be solved solely by NNC. He also imparted that this year’s theme targets all pregnant women to practice good nutrition to attain a healthy weight and safe delivery, its family in feeding the infant, and the local chief executives to continually support and strengthen the nutrition program in the community. In consideration of the current COVID-19 pandemic, NNC encourages LGUs and other nutrition stakeholders to tune in and participate at the agency’s interactive activities such as Home Online Nutrition Exchange (HONE), Tiktok challenge on the F1K jingle, photo contest of healthy pregnant women, interactive games and quizzes for children, and complementary feeding tips from parents. This effort is all towards promoting good nutrition in every household to end malnutrition.
The new e-OPT tool was also discussed by NO III Pelegrino to help record, interpret, and summarized the results of the nutritional assessment of children 0-59 months old. This tool is very important to locate the target group easily for the implementation of the nutrition programs. The new tool includes an auto-fill of population data in the summary worksheet and auto-labeling of the Philippine Standard Geographic Code (PSGC) specific for each barangay. Because of this, it will be much easier for our BNSs to come up with a better but easier way to make a situational analysis based on the auto-generated results. He also presented that this year has 2 electronic tools. One of which is for Acute Malnutrition and the other is a more improved version of the regular e-OPT tool.
The updated MELLPI Pro and its tool were presented by NO I Patulada. She discussed the changes made in the MELLPI Pro and mentioned the carried changes. She also presented the manner of implementation, the performances of local nutrition focal points, the determined progress of implementation of PPAN priorities at the different local levels, and the identified action lines for the improvement of PPAN implementation. NO I Patulada also introduced the MELLPI Pro tool where she demonstrated how it will be used as well as how the scores of the evaluated Local Nutrition Committee and the Local Nutrition Workers will be generated.
Lastly, the Tutok Kainan Guidelines was presented by NO II Baltazar. She reiterated that this program contributes to the prevention of stunting among children 0-23 months old by improving the quality and quantity of food and nutrient intakes and utilization of related ECCD F1KD services among nutritionally at-risk pregnant women and children 6-23 months old in the target tutok kainan program areas. The program aims to provide supplementary feeding in the identified beneficiaries for 90 days to the pregnant women and 180 days to the 6-23 months old children.
Before the meeting ended NO III Pelegrino thanked everyone for actively supporting the nutrition programs of the National Nutrition Council despite the challenges we faced in times of pandemic. And assures everyone that the NNC IX will continue to provide technical support to the LGUs as we have one goal and that is to improve nutrition wellbeing of every Filipino being the most important resource in the country.
NO II Joanna Marie E. Baltazar
