Nigeria

A serious diphtheria outbreak is tearing through Nigeria, where thousands of people have been infected and hundreds more have died. With low national vaccination coverage and a worldwide shortage of lifesaving antitoxin threatening to worsen the outbreak, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges the international community to immediately scale up support to improve treatment, preventive measures and contact tracing to control the outbreak’s spread.

Unprecedented numbers of malnourished children in need of lifesaving treatment are being brought to therapeutic feeding centres run by the international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno state, in northeast Nigeria. MSF is warning of an impending catastrophe if immediate action is not taken.

Nigerian photographer George Osodi has been to Katsina State to document the ever-deepening food crisis in northwest Nigeria. Osodi’s photos offer a rare glimpse into a remote region where Médecins Sans Frontières teams continue to treat thousands of children suffering from malnutrition.

A growing, yet largely ignored, malnutrition crisis is unfolding in northwest Nigeria, which threatens the lives of tens of thousands of children, the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned today.

Temmy Sunyoto, member of the Luxembourg MSF research unit (LuxOR), reports on a mission she carried out in October 2021 in Abakaliki.

“Lucky To Be Alive” is a documentary focusing on the nutritional crisis currently affecting northwest Nigeria. Filmed in Katsina State, it gives voice to Nigerian people struggling to survive against a backdrop of recurrent attacks by armed gangs – known as “bandits”, crop failures and an economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Around 200,000 people have been displaced within the northwest of Nigeria state since 2011. This includes around 100,000 people who sought safety in the towns of Anka, Shinkafi and Zurmi in Zamfara state, following an upsurge of violence in 2018.

There is a substantial and neglected humanitarian crisis in Benue state, indicative of a wider crisis across the Middle Belt.

With the rainy season which brings a huge uptick in rates of malaria, MSF is responding to this endemic disease in northeast Nigeria.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is horrified to hear the news of the killings of five humanitarian aid workers in northeast Nigeria.

After more than a decade of armed conflict, outbreaks of severe malnutrition, malaria, measles and cholera, approximately 1.5 million internally displaced people in Nigeria's Borno state now face the spectre of COVID-19.

Each year Borno state, Nigeria, sees a massive spike in malaria during the rainy season, most severely affecting children under 15.

The escalating violence taking place since last year in Zamfara state is putting the lives of thousands of people at risk.

Severine Courtiol Eguiluz, MSF advocacy manager in Nigeria, talks about the urgent needs of the displaced people and the challenges MSF faces in providing them with the necessary protection, especially children who have lived most of their lives in the protracted conflict.

It has been 10 years since an insurgency began in northeast Nigeria, with armed opposition groups fighting the Nigerian army. A decade on, the conflict is far from over and civilians are caught in the middle.

In Northeastern Nigeria in the city of Maiduguri, MSF has treated 2,922 children for the potentially life-threatening disease since November 2018. Children with measles come from internally displaced population and also from the host community.

More than 35,000 Nigerians have crossed into Cameroon in recent weeks following an upsurge in violence around the northeast Nigerian town of Rann.