By Awaal Gata
Abuja
About 200 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in Bama, Borno state, have been starved to death over the past month, Medical Sans Frontier (MSF), an international charity medical organisation, has disclosed.
A statement by the group yesterday said a “catastrophic humanitarian emergency is unfolding at a camp it visited where 24, 000 people have taken refuge.”
According to MSF, many inhabitants of the camp are traumatised and one in five children is suffering from severe malnutrition.
MSF’s head of mission in Nigeria, Ghada Hatim, said, “Bama is largely closed off. We have been told that people there, including children, have been starved to death.”
According to the accounts given to MSF by displaced people in Bama, new graves are appearing on daily basis.
“We were told on certain days more than 30 people were dying due to hunger and illness.”
The group also disclosed that it 1, 233 graves located near the camp which had been dug in the past year, adding that about 480 of them were for children.
According to the statement, this is the first time the MSF is accessing the town, but it already knew that the condition of the IDPs there is “beyond critical.”
Hatim also disclosed that MSF had begun to treat malnourished children at medical facilities in Maiduguri.