Red Cross sounds alarm over Nigeria child malnutrition

The Red Cross raised the alarm on Tuesday over a sharp increase in severe child malnutrition in Nigeria’s conflict-hit northeast.

Clinics it supports in the region have reported a 24-percent rise in the number of severely malnourished young children admitted this year, it said.

A 15-year insurgency waged by Boko Haram and other jihadist groups in the northeast has killed more than 40,000 people and left around two million displaced.

The fighting has also ruined livelihoods and hindered access to agricultural land and markets.

Over a year, the number of children admitted with severe malnutrition to the clinics it supports in the northeast rose from 6,824 to 8,470, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.

“The rising number of children with severe acute malnutrition is heartbreaking,” said Yann Bonzon, ICRC’s head of delegation in Nigeria.

“Unfortunately, they only represent a fraction of those in need across the region.”

NGOs warn climate change and recent flooding are creating a crisis within a crisis and affecting countries across the wider Lake Chad area, including Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Last month floods killed at least 31 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in the northeast Nigerian city Maiduguri, in one of the worst-ever floods to hit Africa’s most populous country.

Thousands of homes were engulfed by rapidly rising waters after a dam burst following a weekend of torrential rain.

This year floods also washed away seeds and hopes of a good harvest after an especially lean dry season, the time when food is most difficult to access, the ICRC said.

Earlier this month the UN said it had released $5 million to help flood victims in Nigeria, which has also been suffering its worst economic crisis in a generation.

More than six million people in the Lake Chad Basin will experience food shortages in the coming months “due to conflict and the effects of climate change,” the ICRC said, citing humanitarian agency estimates.

“We are increasing our humanitarian assistance, but we are afraid it is not going to be enough,” said Alhaji Abubakar Kende, Secretary General of the Nigerian Red Cross Society.