6 February 2013 - Operation Timbang is conducted every first quarter of the year, through house to house visit for the mass weighing of children 0-71 months to identify malnourished children. National Nutrition Council Region X finally released OPT 2012 result of the region. A total of 584, 900 children aged 0-71 months were weighed. Some 421, 900 or 72.13 percent had normal weight; 33,894 or 5.9 percent were underweight; 7663 or 1.31 percent were severely underweight; and 7047 preschool or 1.20 percent were overweight.The result is based on weight for age data submitted by its five provinces and nine cities in region ten. Misamis Occidental recovered 9.48% having the highest prevalence rate of underweight children (0-71 months) followed by Lanao del Norte at 8.84%, Camiguin at 6.17%, Bukidnon at 5.82% and Misamis Oriental 5.18%.
Severely underweight preschool children (0-71 months old) in Lanao del Norte is at 2.62%. This province has the highest prevalence rate based on weight for age data followed by Misamis Occidental 1.96%, Bukidnon 1.07%; Misamis Oriental 1.04%; and Camiguin 0.97 %.
Per Region X data from its nine cities the summary of Operation Timbang for January-March 2012 weight for age data’s, Tangub City was the highest at 8.94 % with Valencia City at 1.80% as lowest in prevalence rate based in underweight for age children. For Severely underweight children, Oroquieta City reached this at 2.93% highest and Valencia City with 0.21% lowest prevalence rate.
Every year, the National Nutrition Council is mandated to process the Operation Timbang results. From this result, the list of nutritionally-at-risk cities or municipalities is drawn. This is then disseminated to government and non-government groups so that these areas are given priority attention in programming and planning the set of appropriate nutrition intervention.
Operation Timbang data is used for local nutrition action planning. It measures the number of malnourished preschool children and in identifying who will be given priority interventions in the community. The conduct of OPT is intended to generate local data for nutritional assessment, planning, management and evaluation of local nutrition programs.
