Nigeria: a largely ignored nutritional crisis threatens tens of thousands of children in the northwest of the country

Malnutrition is on the rise in northwestern Nigeria. Médecins Sans Frontières alerts: the situation risks becoming unmanageable without a rapid increase in humanitarian aid.

Since January and in partnership with the Nigerian health authorities, MSF teams have already cared for more than 50,000 children in five states in the north-west of the country suffering from acute malnutrition, of whom 7,000 have been hospitalized.

This nutritional crisis, which is largely ignored, threatens the lives of tens of thousands of children.

In Zamfara State, MSF teams tested more than 36,000 children under the age of five in Gummi following a nutrition alert in June.

The results were alarming, with more than half of the children screened suffering from malnutrition.

Alarming results

Nearly a quarter were severely malnourished and required urgent medical attention. MSF, in cooperation with the authorities, immediately deployed an emergency response in the region. In Katsina, teams had to quickly increase their hospitalization capacity from 100 to nearly 280 beds in recent weeks, but in the face of the influx of malnourished children, restricted admission criteria had to be introduced in some treatment centers.

In Kebbi, where MSF operates a hospital and two outpatient centers, approximately 1,500 malnourished children have been treated since March.

The delay and inadequacy of current humanitarian assistance in north-western Nigeria is partly due to the fact that the United Nations has excluded that region from its national humanitarian response plan for the current year, with the latter focusing mainly on the critical situation in the north-east. As a result, many organizations are struggling to obtain funds to implement humanitarian activities, despite urgent and documented needs.