Doctors Without Borders— also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)—a humanitarian medical charity, has expressed worry over the high rate hospital admissions of severely malnourished children in Northern Nigeria in recent weeks.
The charity’s representative in Nigeria, Dr Simba Tirima, told reporters that the inpatient facilities in northern Nigeria have recorded an extraordinary increase in admissions of severely malnourished children with life-threatening complications, exceeding last year’s figures by over 100 per cent in some locations.
He noted that for the MSF teams, this is an alarming indication of a premature peak of the lean season and the increase in acute malnutrition that accompanies it, typically anticipated in July.
Dr Tirima who said there was need for humanitarian assistance to be urgently scaled up, called federal and states government as well as international organizations and donors to take immediate action.
