450 Children Died of Malnutrition in 28 IDP Camps in Borno

IDP Camp

Senator Iroegbu with agency report 
The Borno Emergency Management Agency said sunday that about 450 children died from malnutrition in 28 internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps in the state in 2015.

Executive director of the board, Dr. Sule Mele, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri. Mele said the victims were aged between one and five years old.

He said more than 209,577 children were also screened for various illnesses, including malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and vomiting.

According to him, about 6,444 severe cases of malnutrition were recorded in the camps, 25,511 had mild to moderate symptoms, while 177,622 children were not malnourished.

He attributed the high incidence of malnutrition to lack of access to nutritious foods at the camps.

“Poor feeding practices such as inadequate breastfeeding, offering the wrong foods and not ensuring that children get enough nutritious food also contribute to malnutrition.

“The food that is mostly served in the camps is for adults, which affects the health, growth and physical development of the children.

“Even if children get enough to eat, they will become malnourished if the food does not provide the proper amounts of micro-nutrients, vitamins and minerals to meet their daily nutritional requirements.

“Children should at least be fed with enriched groundnut pap, crayfish, periwinkles, millet, soya beans, moi-moi, fish, ugba, and a whole lot of others vitamin enriched diets.

“The effects of inadequate nutrition and malnutrition include stunted growth and recurrent infections or chronic diseases.

“Poor nutrition in terms of food and feeding behaviours, especially during the first two years of life could also lead to low immunity, significant illnesses, late development and death,” he said.

However, Mele said the state government was partnering with an NGO, Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), in treating children with severe malnutrition in the camps.

He urged the federal government to adopt the U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Programme for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) for healthcare and nutrition to enable proper supplementary feeding for the children in the IDP camps.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian military has arrested two suspects for smuggling themselves into an IDP camp, when displaced persons were brought from Pulka to the Gwoza IDP camp in Borno State.

The male suspects who gave their names as Audu Umar and Hassan Umar are undergoing interrogation by the military and intelligence operatives.

The military also stated that it had not confirmed speculations on the arrest of Boko Haram kingpin, popularly known as Bashir Sarkin Yanka, which in Hausa means “Bashir the king of slaughter”.

The spokesperson of Operation Lafiya Dole in the North-east, Air Commodore Dele Alonge, said the military could not confirm the arrest of Bashir, who was alleged to have impersonated the leader of the sect, Abubakar Sehkau, even as the military added that it had sustained its counter-insurgency operations where some terrorists were eliminated and others apprehended in the region.

Alonge said: “As you are aware, the Nigerian military has succeeded in routing out terrorists from some of their hideouts in the North-east and in the process some were eliminated and others have been arrested.

“We cannot at the moment provide the identities of those in our custody or in other places until after we have conducted thorough investigations.”

The local security volunteer group, known as Civilian JTF in Konduga Local Government Area of Borno State, claimed that it had arrested the Boko Haram kingpin, Bashir, who impersonated Shekau in some videos on the social media.

The arrested suspect was reported to have confessed to the Civilian JTF that he had impersonated Shekau in some videos and was responsible for the death of his (Bashir’s) mother, two sisters and brother apart from engaging in mass slaughter missions in the North-east.