Group raises alarm over worsening malnutrition in North-West

On Jul 5, 2023

The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also known as Doctors Without Borders has reinforce its activities, warning that the current humanitarian response is insufficient to avert a potential catastrophe in the coming months . A press statement made available to newsmen noted that MSF has opened three new outpatient therapeutic feeding centres, in addition to the 10 inpatient centres and 32 outpatient centres that it is already managing in Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states.

MSF has been working in Nigeria since 1996. Currently, its teams are responding to the health and malnutrition crisis in northwest Nigeria, working in 10 inpatient therapeutic feeding centres and 35 outpatient therapeutic feeding centres in Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states.

“Between January and May this year, MSF teams in northwest Nigeria provided inpatient care to 10,200 severely malnourished children with medical complications and admitted 51,000 children to its outpatient feeding programmes. Inpatient admissions were 26 per cent higher than in the same period in 2022 – numbers which were already unprecedently high. This year, admissions are expected to continue rising. The ‘lean season’ – the period between harvests when stocks of food run low, which runs from May to August in Nigeria – only began recently, but bed occupancy is already at 100 per cent in several MSF treatment centres,” the statement read in part.

The MSF medical coordinator, Htet Aung Kyi said, “The numbers of malnourished children that we’re receiving in our facilities are a strong indicator that the further we get into the lean season, the more cases we’ll receive.”

MSF teams noted that children that have recovered from malnutrition and have been discharged, often need to be readmitted as their families struggle to find enough food to keep them healthy. This keeps children stuck in a spiral of malnutrition from which it is difficult to escape.

According to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, an estimated 78 per cent of people in northwest Nigeria live below the poverty line. Healthcare is often unaffordable or hard to access, and many children have never been vaccinated against common childhood diseases.

It noted that a very limited amount of international aid reaches the region, adding that all these factors have contributed to the growing numbers of malnourished children in urgent need of treatment.

Based on the development, MSF has urged all aid organisations working in the country to scale up their humanitarian response, and as well called on the Nigerian government and local health authorities to act now to prevent a catastrophic loss of life in the months ahead.

MSF is also responding to a malnutrition emergency in northeast Nigeria, running a 120-bed intensive therapeutic feeding centre and an outpatient therapeutic feeding programme in Nilefa Kiji Centre in Maiduguri, Borno state.

Last year, MSF teams across Nigeria provided inpatient care to 28,000 children with severe malnutrition and enrolled 175,000 children in its outpatient feeding programmes.

Wumi/PUNCH