KEY 2022 MEDICAL FIGURES
945,500
outpatient consultations
348,100
malaria cases treated
36,900
children admitted to inpatient feeding programs
Escalating violence, displacement, soaring food prices, climate change and epidemics drove severe health and malnutrition crises across northeast and northwest Nigeria last year.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) responded to growing humanitarian needs across the region. In the northeast, we provided care for children with malnutrition in outpatient and inpatient therapeutic centres. In response to a full-scale emergency in Borno state, where people have endured more than a decade of conflict, we tripled the bed capacity at one of our clinics.
The level of violence significantly increased in the northwest last year, forcing more than one million people to flee their homes. Insecurity in Zamfara state forced us to scale down our hospital in Anka, though we continued providing care for residents and displaced people. We also worked in two hospitals and 10 general health facilities in Shinkafi and Zurmi, responding to the consequences of violence.
We also expanded our sexual and gender- based violence programs following an alarming rise in sexual violence. At the same time, we continued running the maternity and neonatal departments of Jahun general hospital and a clinic dedicated to treating women affected by obstetric fistula (a hole in the birth canal during childbirth).
During a massive cholera outbreak that hit parts of the northeast, northwest and south, MSF teams worked alongside the Ministry of Health to treat infected people, launch vaccination campaigns and improve water and sanitation services.
In Sokoto, we treated children suffering from noma, a childhood disease that starts with an infection of the gums and goes on to destroy the bone and tissue of the cheek and nose. Without treatment, noma kills up to 90 per cent of patients within weeks. Our teams also ran an international advocacy campaign, calling for noma to be included in the World Health Organization’s Neglected Tropical Diseases list in 2023.
