Nearly 200 refugees fleeing Boko Haram attacks have starved
to death over the past month in Bama, Nigeria, the medical charity MSF said on
Wednesday, June 22.
A "catastrophic humanitarian emergency" is
unfolding at a camp it visited where 24,000 people have taken refuge. Many
inhabitants are traumatised and one in five children is suffering from acute
malnutrition, the agency said.
Displaced people in Bama say new graves are appearing on a
daily basis, according to a statement from MSF.
It quoted inhabitants as saying about 30 people died every
day due to hunger or illness. Although the area has been unsafe to travel
through, MSF says one of its teams reached Bama on Tuesday. It went in with a
military convoy from the city of Maiduguri in Borno state.
"For several hours on 21 June, an MSF medical team was
able to access the town of Bama in northeastern Nigeria, where 24,000 people,
including 15,000 children (among them 4,500 under five years of age) are
sheltered in a camp located on a hospital compound.
During those few hours, the MSF medical team discovered a
health crisis – referring 16 severely malnourished children at immediate risk
of death to the MSF in-patient therapeutic feeding centre in Maiduguri. A rapid
nutritional screening of more than 800 children found that 19 percent were
suffering from severe acute malnutrition – the deadliest form of malnutrition.
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