LAGOS, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)/ Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian medical non-governmental organization, on Tuesday expressed concern over the malnutrition crisis in northwest Nigeria.
MSF teams have witnessed extraordinarily high numbers of children with malnutrition in MSF's programs in five states across northwest Nigeria this year, said Simba Tirima, MSF country representative in Nigeria, in a statement Tuesday.
Tirima said since January, MSF teams working in collaboration with the Nigerian health authorities have treated close to 100,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition in 34 outpatient facilities and admitted about 17,000 children requiring hospital care in 10 inpatient centers in northwest Nigeria most affected by ongoing violence and banditry.
"With increasing insecurity, climate change and global inflation of food prices in a post-pandemic world, we can only imagine this crisis getting worse," he said.
Tirima said the Nigerian authorities need support to deal with a crisis of this magnitude. "This must include emergency humanitarian funding now for organizations able to respond and a commitment to include northwest Nigeria in the UN's humanitarian response plan for 2023," he said.
