Almost 200 refugees fleeing Boko Haram starved to death: MSF

Global medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Wednesday, said a catastrophic humanitarian emergency is now unfolding in a camp for internally displaced people in Borno State.

Examining the health condition of more than 800 children, MSF discovered that 19% of them are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

He said that about 30 people died every day due to hunger or illness.

Hunters found Ali last month wandering on the fringes of Boko Haram’s Sambisa Forest stronghold with her 4-month-old baby and the father of the child, a Boko Haram fighter who she said helped her escape.

Domestic and worldwide aid agencies are mainly based in Maiduguri and dependent on Nigerian army assistance to access camps outside the city.

Though Bama is just 70km southeast of Maiduguri, ongoing clashes between the rebels and government troops make travel unsafe and farmers have not planted crops for 18 months, Dr Christopher Mampula of MSF explained by telephone from Paris.

During its assessment, the MSF team said it counted 1,233 cemetery graves located near the camp which had been dug in the past year. Since the end of May, almost 200 people have died in the camp.

MSF medical teams screened 466 children and found that 66 percent were emaciated, and 39 percent had a severe form of malnutrition.

The group added, “This is the first time MSF has been able to access Bama, but we already know the needs of the people there are beyond critical”.

NEMA spokesman Abdul Ibrahim said most of the people who are ill at the camp have recently arrived in Bama from isolated areas that have become battlefields between the military and the insurgents.

The Boko Haram family members, Nigerian Army said in a statement signed by Colonel Sani Usman, its spokesperson, were intercepted while approaching a military check point at Liwanti village along Damboa-Bulabulin road of the State.

MSF has been present in Borno State, Maiduguri, since May 2014.

Many of the Nigerians displaced by the fighting have ended up at camps like the one in Bama.

The refugees had fled Boko Haram, which has displaced more than 2 million people in Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.