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This
photo taken on June 30, 2016 shows a young boy suffering from severe acute
malnutrition lying on the ground at one of the UNICEF nutrition clinics, in the
Muna informal settlement, which houses nearly 16,000 internally displaced
people ©Stefan Heunis (AFP)
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Urgent funding is needed
to keep thousands of people alive in Boko Haram-hit northeast Nigeria, the UN
said Monday, stressing that the situation borders on famine and compares to
crises in Darfur and South Sudan.
AFP
report continues:
Aid
agencies have been warning increasingly of food shortages in hard-to-reach
areas of Borno state, while one NGO said last week some inaccessible parts
could be suffering from famine.
Toby
Lanzer, the UN's regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, including the
Lake Chad basin, said progress had been made in recent years, as the Islamists
lost control of territory.
But
he said he was "horrified" by the condition of people on a recent
visit to the town of Bama, adding that the situation in Dikwa and Monguno towns
was "equally as worrying".
"I
have worked in many, many places -- Central African Republic, Darfur, South
Sudan -- and the condition of people in very rural parts of Borno state is as
bad as I have ever seen," he said.
"It
is an acute emergency," he told AFP by telephone from Cameroon.
Lanzer
said US$220 million (€200 million) was needed for the next 10 weeks "for
the purposes of keeping people alive".
Nigeria,
whose revenues have been hit by sustained low global oil prices, does not have
the resources to cope and cannot do much more, he added.
- Starving to death -
International
NGOs have faced difficulties accessing places such as Bama, which is some 70
kilometres (45 miles) from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, because of
roads still prone to ambush and attack.
The
medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said last month at least 188
people had died mainly from diarrhoea and malnutrition at a camp in the town
since June 22.
AFP
was told in early June at least 10 people were starving to death every day at a
camp in Banki, 60 kilometres from Bama, and that 376 people had died in three
months.
Meanwhile,
the UN children's fund UNICEF said 250,000 children under five risked severe
acute malnutrition in Borno this year and if nothing was done, 50,000 could
die.
Lanzer
said a UN team had managed to go to Banki from Cameroon three days ago but
access was still a problem.
"The
condition of people is awful. There are dozens of people dying daily of
malnutrition... Our assessment is there are 15,000 people and five of them are
dying daily as we speak," he added.
- The 'F-word' -
Last
Friday, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said
"a famine... could be occurring in the worst affected and less accessible
pockets of the state".
Famine
is declared where at least 20 percent of an area's population faces an extreme
lack of food and at least 30 percent of children are acutely malnourished.
The
death rate also has to exceed 2/10,000 per day.
Lanzer
said there were 4.4 million people in the wider northeast and 431,000 in Borno
who are considered severely food insecure, "a step below the F-word"
(famine).
"In
my 20 years of working in these type of places, I have never seen an F. I don't
want one to appear on my watch. We will do everything we can to avoid it."
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This
photo taken on June 30, 2016 shows displaced children L) watching, as malnourished
and sick children are being taken away in an ambulance for treatment in Bama's
camp for internally displaced people ©Stringer (AFP)
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Funding,
if secured, will go towards providing clean water, medicine, blankets and
nutrition, he said, praising Nigeria for its work on the relief effort.
Nigeria
has released 10,000 tonnes of emergency food supplies and is helping
international agencies with visas and customs clearance, he added.
In
part, Lanzer blamed perceptions of Nigeria -- Africa's leading economy -- for
foreign governments' lack of support in providing help.
But
he warned if nothing was done "thousands of people will die", adding:
"I think the international community has been quite hesitant up to now to
engage on any noticeable level.
"But it's now at a
stage where we really do need to step up."
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