A disastrous, humongous and catastrophic humanitarian emergency is unfolding as more than 1200 people living in a camp for internally displaced people in northeastern Nigeria have died from starvation and sickness during the last year, according to the international medical humanitarian organization Medecins sans Frontieres ( Doctors Without Borders).
The camp, located in a hospital compound in the remote town of Bama in Nigeria’s Borno state, hosts about 24,000 people, including 15,000 children, and they are in a “dire health situation,” the aid agency said last week. According to the aid group, almost six people a day had died in the camp since May 23, mainly from diarrhea and malnutrition, and the group’s assessment team counted 1,233 graves that had been dug during the last year in a cemetery near the camp. About 480 of the burial sites were for children, the group said.
Ghada Hatim, MSF’s Head of Mission in Nigeria, in addition to the graves, 16 malnourished children who are on the verge of death were found, with 19% of the more than 800 children who were rapidly screened in the camp found to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition – the deadliest form of malnourishment in existence.
The sickest children were being treated at medical facilities in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. “We … see the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed and survived many horrors,” Hatim said.
MSF has also indicated the deaths of 188 people since May of this year due to malnutrition and diarrhea. The organization has evacuated 1,192 people in June who are in need of immediate medical attention if they are to survive.
“This group of mostly women and children was placed in the Camp Nursing internally displaced camp. Of the 466 children screened by MSF medical teams at Camp Nursing, 66% were emaciated and 39% of these children had a severe form of malnutrition.
Upon assessment, 78 children had to be immediately hospitalised at the MSF feeding centre which has an inpatient capacity of 86 beds,” the statement said.
