UNICEF aids 33,000 Borno IDPs battling malnutrition and water shortages

UNICEF, in partnership with an NGO, GoalPrime Organisation, launched a campaign on Thursday to aid over 33,000 IDPs in Mafa, Mafa Local Area of Borno State, who suffer from a clean water shortage and acute malnutrition.

“14,000 of the children here suffer Global Acute Malnutrition,” Nura Shehu, UNICEF’s Nutrition Assessment Officer for Borno and Yobe states, disclosed to newsmen at the camp, explaining that “5000 of them suffer severe acute malnutrition while 9000 suffer moderate acute malnutrition.”

He said under the global agency’s Rapid Response Mechanism, 6-59-month-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.

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“But in partnership with Goalprime, we have rehabilitated the other three,” he said.

“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.”

He continued, “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.”