Borno State government has debunked media report that 450 children of between one and five years living in the 28 designated internally displaced persons, IDPs camps in the state died as a result of malnutrition in 2015.
It would be recalled that Executive Director of the Borno Emergency Management Agency, Dr. Sule Mele, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Sunday in Maiduguri had allegedly been misquoted.
But Commissioner of Health, Dr. Haruna Mshelia, at a press briefing in his office at Musa Usman Secretariat on Tuesday said contrary to reports, statistics showed that a total of 54,000 children under age 5 were recorded in all the resettlement camps, in which 98 children (1.5%) who suffered severe cases of malnutrition died last year. He however admitted that from December to January 2015, a total average of 450 deaths was recorded across the camps as a result of common causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, measles and malnutrition. Mshelia noted that all children under five years living at IDP camps were screened every 2-3 months for evidence of malnutrition, meaning a child could be screened up to four times in a year.
He said in 2015, over 200,000 children were screened, out of which 6,444 were found to be severely malnourished and therefore treated through Community Management of Acute Malnutrition, CMAM, and Infant & Young Child Feeding, IYCF, programmes of the State Primary Health Care Development Agency, SPHCDA, and as well supported by Nutrition Programme Support Partners like UNICEF, Save the Children, SC, Action Against Hunger, AAH, among others.
He however noted that the National Demographic and Health Survey Data (NDHS- 2013) reveals that even the North East that had suffered much due to insurgency, has an under-five mortality rate of 160 deaths per 1,000, second only to the North West with 185 deaths per 1,000 population.
By: Inusa Ndahi
National Mirror News
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