In a bid to ramp up humanitarian responses in the North East, the United Nations (UN) has allocated $20 million to the problem of food security and nutrition crisis in the North East.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Head of Public Information United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Nigeria, Ann Weru said the fund was from the Central Response Fund (CERF) and the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund (NHF).
“In support of Government efforts, some $9 million in CERF funding and a complementary $11 million NHF allocation will go towards a coordinated multi-sectorial response aimed at preventing deterioration to famine or famine-like conditions.
“Almost 700,000 children under five are likely to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe (BAY) states in 2023.
“This is more than double the number of SAM cases in 2022 and four times the number of cases in 2021.”
The statement added that about half a million people in the affected states were expected to face emergency levels of food insecurity from June to August, which is the peak of “lean season”.
It further said that the lean season coincided with the rainy season known for incidence of diarrhea and other outbreaks that could aggravate the precarious situation of malnourished children.
“Extremely high rates of acute malnutrition and deaths are predicted unless there is a rapid and significant scale up of humanitarian assistance.
“Government, donors and the international community must make urgent funding available to protect the lives and future of vulnerable children in North-east Nigeria,” the statement quoted Mr Matthias Schmale, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria, as saying.
It explained that bulk of the CERF allocation would go to the World Food Programme for the provision of food security interventions, including food and voucher assistance for 95,000 extremely food-insecure people in three garrison towns of Borno.
“Some $2 million will go to the UN Children’s Fund for the prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, including providing ready-to-eat therapeutic food and Tom Brown solutions, a nutrient-rich locally produced supplementary food.
“And $1million will go to the Food and Agriculture Organization for seeds, tools and other agricultural livelihood support to boost local production of nutritious foods to build resilience.
“Most of the NHF funding, $11 million, will go towards improving access to clean water and sanitation hygiene, and nutrition, including reactivating, sustaining and scaling up the bed capacity at stabilization centres and scaling up outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes.
“The rest of the funding will go to healthcare, including the integrated management of childhood illnesses and complicated SAM cases, and to protection services with a focus on gender-based violence, child protection, and mine action.
“The NHF aims to allocate 50 percent of funding to eligible national partners on the frontlines,” the statement added.
