AFRICA/NIGERIA - Malnutrition, trauma, violence: urgent medical assistance to the survivors of the attack committed by Boko Haram

Friday, 16 January 2015

Baga (Agenzia Fides) - In the wake of a major attack carried out by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram on the town of Baga, in northern Nigeria, a team from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is assisting survivors who have fled to the city of Maiduguri, the main city of the Borno state. Wounded survivors are being treated in Maiduguri hospital by Ministry of Health teams. Some 5,000 survivors of the attack on Baga are staying in a camp in Maiduguri known as ‘Teacher village’, while others have settled on the shores of Lake Chad.
A statement sent to Agenzia Fides by the organization says that a number of survivors of the attack are believed to still be in the Baga area, hiding in the bush. After Having assessed the most urgent needs, MSF has donated food, drugs and medical supplies to the health centre in ‘Teacher village’, which was running short of supplies. The MSF team will also support the camp’s health centre, with a focus on the health of pregnant women and children, who are particularly vulnerable. There is also tension in Maidaguri after a suicide bomb attack on the city’s market on 10 January, which killed 20 people.
According to the director of the operations in Nigeria, in the last four years, the situation has seriously deteriorated in northeastern Nigeria.
The radicalization of Boko Haram and its change in strategy, with the occupation of villages and towns, mass kidnappings, creation of a caliphate, may result in further displacement of people, public health problems, especially epidemics, and difficulties in providing medical assistance in the region.
Today there are between 800 000 and 1 and a half million displaced, mostly in the northeast of the country. MSF, which has been working in Nigeria since 2004, has had a permanent base in Maiduguri, the main city in Borno state, since August 2014. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 16/01/2015)


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