A Doctors Without Borders health promoter accompanies a mother with her child after being discharged from the under-six ward of the Nilefa Kiji nutrition centre. Nigeria, April 2023.
Doctors Without Borders nurse attends to a critically ill child admitted at the emergency room of Nilefa Kiji nutrition centre. Nigeria, April 2023.
We have not seen anything like this since we started running malnutrition activities here in 2017. The number of weekly admissions is two to three times higher than at the same period over the past five years – and it’s still rising. Last year, we sounded the alarm in June when admissions skyrocketed at the start of the hunger gap but this year, we are already seeing alarming numbers while we are still weeks away from the pre-harvest shortage period. The clock is ticking for action if we want to avoid a catastrophe.Htet Aung Kyi, Medical Coordinator
“Immediate action is required”
Malnutrition is not new in Maiduguri, where years of conflict and insecurity have caused a critical humanitarian situation. Many people have been displaced from their homes and now live in precarious conditions in informal sites, with host communities, or in transit through detention camps.
One in seven was coming from the Hajj detention camp for former members of armed opposition groups, their families and those who lived under their control. Many arrived in this camp in an already precarious state of health which further worsened due to the harsh living conditions in this transit camp.
Late 2021 saw the closure of official camps for displaced people and cuts to humanitarian aid and food aid. For most people, living conditions are extremely harsh, while some face restrictions on their movements, preventing them from earning a living or growing crops. People’s vulnerability increased. More recently, people's vulnerability further increased due to the redesign of the Nigerian currency in late 2022, which led to a shortage of cash, and the recent destruction of big markets in Maiduguri.
Waiting to be attended to at the triage, the women listen to an Doctors Without Borders staff about good health seeking practices. Nigeria, April 2023.
Doctors Without Borders teams are providing inpatient and outpatient treatment for malnourished children and providing targeted feeding for children with moderate malnutrition to prevent their condition deteriorating. Doctors Without Borders mobile teams also run clinics providing basic healthcare to people living in Hajj camp and Muna and Maisandari informal sites.
“Food aid alone will not be enough”
“Food aid alone will not be enough,” says Gabriele Santi, Doctors Without Borders project coordinator in Maiduguri.
Authorities and aid organisations need to immediately ramp up malnutrition-related activities and increase bed capacity in intensive therapeutic feedings centres, but they also need to improve living conditions in transit camps and expand people’s access to healthcare. This must be backed by a swift scale-up of donor funding and a strong coordination of these funds to make sure that food reaches those most in need. At this stage, only 16% of the funds requested by nutrition cluster have been secured. This is alarming as well.Gabriele Santi, Project Coordinator
From early January to 20 April 2023, 1,283 malnourished children were admitted for intensive hospital care at the Doctors Without Borders feeding centre – about 120% per cent more than from the same period last year.
Next to this nutrition emergency in Maiduguri, Doctors Without Borders teams are also responding to large-scale health and malnutrition crises elsewhere in northwest Nigeria, working in 32 outpatient therapeutic feeding centres and 10 inpatient therapeutic feeding centres in Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states. Last year Doctors Without Borders treated 147,860 children with severe acute malnutrition across northwest Nigeria.
