Malnutrition: UNICEF launches campaign to support Borno IDPs

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in partnership with a non-governmental organisation, Goal Prime Organisation, launched a campaign on Thursday to aid over 33,000 internally displaced persons in the Mafa Local Area of Borno State, who suffer from water shortage and acute malnutrition.

READ ALSO:Diphtheria: UNICEF organises 9.3 mln vaccines to fight outbreak

He said 5, 000 of them suffer from severe acute malnutrition while 9, 000 suffer moderate acute malnutrition.

He added that under the global agency’s Rapid Response Mechanism, 6-59 months old children suffering severe acute malnutrition without complications have been admitted to the camp’s healthcare facility, while their counterparts with complications are in healthcare facilities outside the camp.

UNICEF’s Water Sanitation and Hygiene Specialist, Dr. Loris Salihu, told newsmen that out of the four boreholes at the camp, only one was functional.

“But in partnership with Goalprime, we have rehabilitated the other three,” he revealed. The clean water supply met the global humanitarian services standard of 15 litres per person per day when the population of the IDPs at the camp was just about 7000. But with the influx of more IDPs from neighbouring communities, swelling their population to over 33,000 now, the supply drastically fell to just about 7.5 litres per person per day now, which is grossly inadequate by global standards. To remedy the situation, apart from these four boreholes, we may not immediately dig more, but we will consider optimising the capacity of these four and examine the possibility of augmenting their capacity from other sources in town,” he said.

PUNCH/Wumi