75,000 children to die of malnutrition in North East – NGO

Save the Children, an International NGO, says that 75,000 children would die of malnutrition related cause next year in the North East region, if the situation is not reversed urgently.
Kevin Watkins, the Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children UK, said this at a news conference on the organisation’s humanitarian interventions and response in the region on Thursday in Abuja.
Watkins, who lamented that out of 1.4 million people displaced in the North East, Maiduguri in Borno State specifically, more than 400,000 children are severely malnourished.
The chief executive said that Nigeria was not a poor country to have allowed this crisis lingered for over two years, adding that the situation can be avoided.
He said that allocation of more resource and political commitment to the crises would have ended it.
Watkins said: “I will not say that it is the crises that are responsible for this situation because the crises have been on for over two years.
“I expect that a lot of parents who were displaced for over two to three years now still do not have opportunities to cater for their families and these children are still malnourished.”
Watkins said that young children are succumbing to hunger and diseases daily with hundreds of their graves discovered in newly accessible areas.
Watkins said that without an immediate and rapid scale up of the response, 75,000 children would die from malnutrition related cause next year.
Describing the situation as immediate tragedy, he, however, called for support from the international community to help resolve this crisis.
Watkins said that one-third of the humanitarian responses have been funded by the United States, United Kingdom and European Union.
He called on the intervention of Japan, Germany, France and Italy to address this tragedy.
He said: “I assured you that Save the Children is committed to address this crisis in Borno and other areas in Nigeria as well.
“The international community should support Nigeria to help resolve this immediate tragedy.
“My hope is that the international community would step up interventions and also Nigeria will partner with international community in tackling this unfolding crisis.”
Similarly, Ben Foot, the organisation’s Country Director in Nigeria, said the NGO has been working diligently for two years to assist children in desperate need.
Foot noted that the organisation had since inception in 2014 reached over 200,000 children through it humanitarian response in Nigeria.
He attributed their lapses on inadequate resources to respond to scale up the ratio.
Foot further described as disheartening the failure of the international community to step up and assist Nigeria and UN to respond to the enormous crisis.
He also advocated for urgent scaling up response in a complex and insecure environment.
He said: “Save the Children launched a response to crisis in 2014 and was one of the NGOs to provide life saving assistance in Borno and Gombe where there are currently 1.6 displaced people.
“Since then we have reached more than 300,000 people, including 200,000 children.
“In Borno, we are currently working in Hawul, Kaga, Jere and Konduga local government areas.”