MSF Calls for Aiding 500,000 People in Nigeria Amid 'Catastrophic' Conditions

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) urged international organizations to mobilize to provide food and medical aid to over 500,000 people in northeastern Nigeria.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) called on Wednesday for the provision of emergency aid for over 500,000 people in northeastern Nigeria living in "catastrophic" conditions.

Over half a million people are said to be living in unsanitary conditions in several villages and town across the state of Borno.

"People have almost no access to humanitarian aid. People are gathered, isolated and cut off in a half-destroyed town, and are totally dependent on external assistance, which is cruelly lacking. If we don’t manage quickly to provide them with food, water and urgent medical supplies, malnutrition and disease will continue to wreak havoc," MSF emergency program manager Hugues Robert was quoted as saying in an MSF press release.

MSF medical teams' estimates characterize the mortality rate in the area around the Banki town as "extremely high."

People living in the region are suffering from the conflict between Boko Haram militant group and the armies in the region, collapsed local economy and absence of crops and livestock.

The MSF urged international organizations to mobilize to provide food and medical aid to those suffering in the Borno state.

According to the MSF, in 2015 it provided over 340,000 consultations to the local population, treated 13,000 children for malnutrition and vaccinated more than 58,500 people against cholera.