NEW YORK, October 21, 2019—Criminal groups and extreme violence in Zamfara state, northwestern Nigeria, have caused tens of thousands of people to flee their villages, leading to malnutrition and exacerbating other health needs in an already impoverished region, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
With farms abandoned, a nutrition crisis looms large in Zamfara. In the town of Anka, where many of the displaced have gathered, MSF runs a 135-bed pediatric ward at Anka General Hospital, primarily treating children for malaria, malnutrition, or respiratory tract infections. From January to September, MSF teams treated 7,445 children for malnutrition in Anka.