More than 1200 people living in a camp for internally
displaced people in northeastern Nigeria have died from
starvation and sickness during the last year in what is
becoming "a catastrophic humanitarian emergency,"
according to the medical humanitarian organisation
Medecins sans Frontieres.
The camp, located in a hospital compound in the
remote town of Bama in Nigeria's Borno state, hosts
about 24,000 people, including 15,000 children, and
they are in a "dire health situation," the aid agency said
last week.
Violence in northern Nigeria fuelled by the Islamist
extremist group Boko Haram has forced more than 2.5
million people to flee their homes, according to United
Nations statistics.
News of the crisis in Bama came the same week as
the international body marked World Refugee Day and
called for increased unity and efforts to assist the
record 65.3 million people who are displaced around
the globe.
A medical team from Doctors Without Borders was able
to get into Bama for the first time for a few hours on
Tuesday to do an assessment, the aid group said.
The team discovered 16 severely malnourished children
at immediate risk of death and about 150 more
youngsters suffering from "severe acute malnutrition,"
the deadliest form of the condition, according to the
group. The sickest children were being treated at
medical facilities in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno
state.
"We ... see the trauma on the faces of our patients
who have witnessed and survived many horrors," Hatim
said.
According to the aid group, almost six people a day had
died in the camp since May 23, mainly from diarrhea
and malnutrition, and the group's assessment team
counted 1,233 graves that had been dug during the last
year in a cemetery near the camp. About 480 of the
burial sites were for children, the group said.
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