The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, on Monday said malnutrition in Borno state is the first emergency the newly constituted ECOWAS Centre for Disease Control will be saddled with.
This is just as the minister declared a “nutrition emergency” in Borno, adding, “We stand to lose 80 children each day if we don’t do anything”.
Prof. Adewole spoke after a meeting with representatives from Borno State, which has set up emergency team to look into the intense malnutrition affecting camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The minister, who had to skip portions of the meeting in order to flag off the inaugural meeting of the governing board of the ECOWAS Centre for Disease Control, which was delayed more than an hour and a half until his arrival, said a rapid response team put up over the weekend is to be merged with Borno’s response team.
Recall that some reports recently put the number of IDPs, most of them children, hospitalized for severe malnutrition at 700, of which about 61, are categorised as “critically malnourished”.
Some reports also claim up to 376 people have been buried in the last three months and described those alive as “walking corpses”.
Most of the severe cases of malnourished children were those rescued from Boko Haram captivity.
