The United Nations has allocated $20 million to urgently ramp up the response to the alarming food security and nutrition crisis in the north-east of Nigeria.
According to the Press Briefing at the United Nations Headquarter in New York, United States on Tuesday, the Spokesman disclosed this, said $9 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and $11 million from the Nigeria Humanitarian Fund.
He said, “We will support the Government-led response efforts across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states. Assistance includes […] ready-to-eat food, access to clean water, health care and agriculture support”.
Stating that almost 700,000 children under five are likely to suffer from life-threatening severe acute malnutrition this year in this region and more than half a million people may face emergency levels of food insecurity during the lean season from June to August.
UN Spokesman noted that the emergency funding will help jump start the response, but humanitarian partners need more to prevent widespread hunger, malnutrition. “The $1.3 billion humanitarian response plan for Nigeria is only 26 per cent funded”.
In the lean season which coincides with the rainy season, when the incidence of acute watery diarrhoea, cholera, malaria and other diseases increases, aggravating 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,” warned by Matthias Schmale, the Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria.
“Government, donors and the international community must make urgent funding available to protect the lives and future of vulnerable children in north-east Nigeria”, he added.
It stated further that the bulk of the CERF allocation, $6 million, will go to the World Food Programme for food security interventions (including food and voucher assistance) for 95,000 extremely food-insecure people in three garrison towns of Borno State.
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.