On May 5, 2016, health workers
were alerted that some people needed help within the Internally Displaced
Persons, IDP, camp in Bama, 70 kilometres from Maiduguri, the Borno State
capital.
On getting there, five women were seen lying on the ground,
some gasping while the others were barely conscious. Three of the women were
with children, including a little girl sucking her mother’s breast while her
brother lay on the ground with his head on the mother’s leg.
The only means of
transportation in the camp are handcarts but by the time some were brought to
transport the women to the clinic, two of them had died, one of them being the
woman whose daughter was still sucking her breast.
The little children were separated from the dead mother and
handed over to their grandmother, an elderly woman sitting nearby, who herself
was so weak that she could only watch helplessly while her daughter died. The
little boy died the following day.
The women’s corpses were left there in the open and only
buried after 24 hours. This was because the men who were called to prepare the
bodies for burial refused, as there was no water to wash the corpses and bathe
themselves after the burial.
“They told me they had not had water to drink since morning
and were dehydrated and too weak to do anything,” a health worker in the camp
told the icirnigeria.org on
condition of anonymity.
Health workers, camp officials and security agents said
displaced persons in Bama face serious humanitarian crisis unless something is
done urgently.
According to a report by a
local non governmental organisation, NGO, Bama Community Peace Initiative,
BAM-COPI, to the Protection Sector Working Group of Borno State under the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees, UNHCR, a daily death toll of 18 to
21 is recorded in the camp due to starvation, thirst and lack healthcare and
poor hygiene.
“Food is cooked on a day in a very poor quality and low
ration in all the six designated kitchens (each) with an average population of
about 4,000 and above eating virtually once a day,” the report, signed by
Ibrahim Mohammed, stated.
It added that from May 4 – 20, when the report was written,
around 11 children aged between 0 – 15 were buried daily.
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