She is the latest arrival at a treatment center for severely malnourished children in Nigeria's northeast, where a long-running Islamist insurgency has uprooted millions, forcing farmers to abandon fields and causing food shortages. Some 1.74 million children under the age of 5 face acute malnutrition in the area, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says. At the treatment center at Damaturu Hospital, in the Yobe state capital, Aisha's mother Fatima said there were days when her family goes to sleep hungry because of a lack of food. Some international donors have shifted funding elsewhere, including Ukraine, Ethiopia and Afghanistan, which are also facing increased humanitarian needs, the OCHA says. Across from Fatima's bed, 21-year-old Sahura Hassan brought her son to the Damaturu treatment center because he had stopped eating, had a fever, could not sit and was severely dehydrated.

Source: Ethiopian News August 28, 2022 09:34 UTC