March 9, 2018
By Jutha Gupah Maiduguri
The WHO representative in Nigeria, Dr. Wondimagegnehu Wondi has said that continued escalations of Boko Haram insurgency in North-East have affected 14.8 million people directly on their health and well being. Wondi disclosed this on Friday; in 2017 UN Organisation Report released to journalists in Maiduguri. He said the nine-year insurgency in the region; has resulted into a “humanitarian crisis with devastating effects” on people’s health and well-beings. According to him, two million people have been displaced; while large numbers of returnees from Chad, Niger and Cameroon exert more pressures on the already disrupted health system. He said since July 2009, over 20, 000 people have been killed with thousands more injured and are taking refuge in camps and host communities in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. “The living conditions of affected populations have severely deteriorated,” said Dr. Wondi in the report. The report also explained that Borno’s health system has been significantly disrupted with a rise in outbreaks of preventable communicable diseases. It added that there was restricted access to essential medicines and inadequate care for patients with non-communicable diseases such as cancer, renal failure and diabetes. “More than 80% of Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Borno state have insufficient functioning health facilities,” said Dr. Wondi. On camps’ health facilities, the report said: “Where health facilities exist in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps, most of the facilities do not have reliable access to basic supplies, equipment and medicines.” It said the rate of severe acute malnutrition is estimated at 14 per cent further complicating a challenging humanitarian environment. “The complicating humanitarian challenges led to deaths; especially among children under-five,” said Wondi. The UN health organisations also lamented on the estimated mortality rates in some areas, which escalated by 400 per cent higher than emergency thresholds. The report disclosed: “Two years after Nigeria marked its last case of polio, new cases of polio however; resurfaced in Borno state in 2016. “For many years, the ongoing crisis prevented many children from receiving routine vaccinations such as polio vaccine.” On destroyed health facilities, he said: “With 64 per cent of health facilities completely or partially destroyed and 32 per cent completely non-functional, more than 77 per cent of children under-5 years were never vaccinated against measles.” Childhood vaccination rates, according to report; dropped dramatically, leaving children at greater risk of preventable life-threatening diseases such as polio, meningitis and measles. He said the proactive leadership and collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH), WHO and partners have reached more than three million people in need of basic healthcare services in 2017. According to him, the Nigerian Government continues to demonstrate strong political commitment to ending polio once and for all.
