About 2
million people are trapped in Nigeria’s North-Eastern areas still controlled by
Boko Haram, and are facing serious humanitarian conditions, the United Nations
has said.
This was
disclosed Friday in Geneva, Switzerland, by UNICEF’s Chief of Nutrition in
Nigeria, Arjan de Wagt, during a press briefing by the UN Information Service.
According to
Mr. Wagt who spoke on telephone from Abuja, about 2 million people are still in
areas which are inaccessible because of the security situation.
The 2
million people are in Borno State alone, he said.
Regarding
Bama, he said there’s only access to the town of Bama and the IDP camp there,
but not the other parts of the town.
He said the
situation of the people trapped in Boko Haram-held areas was unknown, but that
sometimes UNICEF managed to get a glimpse when IDPs from those areas came to
more accessible areas.
UNICEF could
then check their nutrition and health status, which was bad, he added.
Military
success has helped to make more areas in the North East accessible for
humanitarian assistance.
“Before
April 2016, there was no access to most areas in Borno State because of the
security situation,” he said.
But since
April, access has progressively become possible to some of the other areas, he
noted.
He however
lamented that “In the newly-accessible areas, the levels of suffering and of malnutrition
are very high. In some of those areas, there’s a severe acute malnutrition rate
of 12 per cent, which is a level rarely seen. It is of a severity similar to
that seen during the Horn of Africa crisis in 2011, in Somalia”.
Children
face acute malnutrition
Mr. Wagt
raised alarm over looming humanitarian disaster in the North East.
He said in
Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States, there were 400,000 children “with severe acute
malnutrition, and in Borno alone, 244,000 children are affected”.
He said it
was the “worst level of malnutrition possible”, and the children were on “the
brink of death”.
About one in
five of those children were likely to die if they were not reached in time with
specialized therapeutic foods, he warned.
He added
that, if nothing was done, about 49,000 of the 244,000 children suffering from
severe acute malnutrition in Borno State would die over the coming 12 months,
translating to about 134 every day.
“Some 65,000
people are in famine-like conditions, the worst level of food insecurity, and
facing starving to death for lack of food. It is a very unique situation in the
world,” he said.
Addressing
the problem
To address
the situation, Mr. Wagt said, resources in financial human and organizational
terms were needed.
“All
partners – Governments, the UN, NGOs and the private sector and individuals had
to work together to provide the support that was needed.”
He added
that all people in accessible areas needed to be reached, and food aid needed
to be brought to them.
“For the
youngest children as well as pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, specialized,
therapeutic, high nutrient food is required. If this is not addressed, more and
more children would develop severe acute malnutrition,” he said.
He said
UNICEF was supporting a nutrition programme and had recruited 1,500 community
mobilizers going from house to house, from shelter to shelter, so that severely
malnourished children could be linked to the health services so they could get
treatment.
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