About 250,000 children in Nigeria’s Borno state located in the northeastern region of the country face severe malnutrition and risk death, UNICEF warns, attributing it to the humanitarian crisis caused by Islamist militants group Boko Haram.
The UN childrens agency is warning that about 49,000 children out of the almost quarter million will die if they are not reached with treatment.
“Some 134 children on average will die every day from causes linked to acute malnutrition if the response is not scaled up quickly,” said Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF Regional Director for Western and Central Africa.
“We need all partners and donors to step forward to prevent any more children from dying. No one can take on a crisis of this scale alone.”
Fontaine says the agency is still not able to reach around 2 million people in Borno state, adding that the true extent of the crisis is yet to be revealed to the world.
Boko Haram has waged an almost decade-long war in the West African region with the aim of imposing an Islamist governance.
