AT A tiny air force clinic in Bama, a wretched town in north-eastern Nigeria, a military doctor is trying to insert a drip into a starving child. He gives up on the two-year-old’s arms and labours with a needle just above his brow. But that vein has collapsed too, and blood seeps through the pinprick. Half-dressed and dirty, the baby is bundled off to a quieter room. “He’s going to die if I can’t get it in today,” the medic says, following him out.
Scenes like this are common in Borno, the state worst-affected by Nigeria’s insurgency, Boko Haram, which is affiliated to Islamic State. In Maiduguri, its capital, camps for the internally displaced are teeming with bloated-bellied babies. Their shoulder-blades stick out like wings. When a bereaved mother collapses at a clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières, a non-governmental organisation, staff barely blink: they see hundreds of underfed children every day.
All told, the UN estimates that 240,000 children in Borno are suffering from severe acute malnutrition—the deadliest category of it. More than 130 will die each day without assistance. Across the wider north-east of Nigeria, a...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2cg0nSS
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