Govt declares nutrition emergency in Borno

Govt declares nutrition emergency in Borno

The Federal Government has declared a state of emergency on nutrition in Borno State.

President Muhammadu Buhari has also called for a quick response to the malnourished, as well as medical and environmental challenge going on in the Northeast.

About 240,000 children are severely malnourished with about 128 estimated as dying daily.

The decision followed an emergency meeting with the government of Borno State over the malnutrition crisis.

Minister of Health Prof. Isaac Adewale made the declaration yesterday at the inaugural meeting of the governing board of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Regional Centre for Disease Control in Abuja (RCDC).

His words: “We are declaring a nutritional emergency in Borno. We try to put a rapid response team in place following Mr. President’s directive. This morning, we had an emergency meeting with the Borno State emergency response team, because more children might die if we don’t do something quickly.

“RCDC will be part of the emergency response team we are putting up.”

The minister, who noted that the first major assignment for the RCDC will be in Borno, directed its acting Executive Secretary, Prof. Abdulsalami Nasidi, to deploy a rapid response team to the state to tackle the crisis.

“A large number of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are at the verge of death. There is need for immediate action, for each child identified, there are many unidentified.

“The scale of our intervention should be more than 500,000 children. The government needs to scale up vaccination in cholera and polio; we do need to ensure clean environment for these children as well,” Prof Adewole added.

THE NATION