We evacuated 550 malnourished children from Bama — NGO

A Non Governmental Organization, Empower54, said it had evacuated 550 malnourished children who were among the rescued people from Sambisa forest in Bama, Borno State.
The group’s chairperson, Modupe Ozolua, said in a statement in Abuja that  the children were among 1, 800 people taken from the Bama’s Internally Displaced Persons camp to Maiduguri with the support of the Borno State government.
She said acting on the permission of Governor Kashim Shettima, the children were taken to the newly completed Nurses’ Village Estate in Maiduguri, adding that the governor also provided 15 large school buses for their evacuation and instructed several government agencies to play different roles in ensuring that the children got proper treatment on arrival.
“When the evacuation team and children arrived in Maiduguri at 10pm that night, the governor invited MSF (Doctors without Borders) to assist the state medical personnel in ensuring that the children received the best care possible. It was at that point that MSF first got involved in the children from Bama,” she said.
She said she was surprised to read about the reported 200 children that died from malnutrition and starvation in the state, adding that during the group’s four day stay in Bama they were not told of such incident.
She said the group  would establish four critical care nutrition centres across four locations within the state.
The centres, she said, were critical because humanitarian aids were not being sent to communities outside Maiduguri and all infrastructure, including hospitals outside of Maiduguri were destroyed by Boko Haram.