Malaria, diarrhoea, malnutrition has hit the victims of the herdsmen crisis in Benue State currently taking refuge at the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, camp in Daudu leading to the death of 12 of the displaced persons in the last one month. Children are also not speared as many are diagnosed of malnutrition and diarrhea.
A health personnel at the Daudu 1 & 2 camps said “but for the relentless intervention of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and the state government, the situation would have gotten out of hand”.
According to her, “the people are getting sick and some die, while others are surviving. In the last one month so many came down with malaria. “We see between 50 and 70 patients every day and about 40 of them are down with malaria and others with diarrhea. They come with complains of headache, pains, fever and all of that which were confirmed to be malaria. “The death rate is not so high because of the intervention of the state government and the Red Cross, but there have been deaths.
In the last one month two died of malaria at the Benue State University Teaching Hospital, BSUTH, Makurdi, while ten others died in the Daudu camps. “As for children, malnutrition is on a very high rate. It’s a major problem with children in the camp. But for the Red Cross intervention it would have been worse. “At the moment Red Cross has undertaken a programme to stem malnutrition among the children. They are being given food and packs of nutritional diet called Plumpy Nuts each week, which is monitored by the Red Cross to check the malnutrition problem.”
One of the victims in the camp, Ucha Ikpachi who lamented over the rate of illness and deaths in the camp appealed to the Federal Government to show more concern to their plight and help them return to their ancestral homes. He said: “The state government and other organisations have been doing their best for us, but the situation is overwhelming for them. We are falling sick and people are dying almost every week now. Why has the Federal Government abandoned us, are we not Nigerians? “They are not supporting us in anyway but have left us to die here while our villages are still being attacked and taken over by herdsmen. We want our villages secured so that we can go home and continue with our farming, we are tired of staying here.”
Reacting, the Executive Secretary of the Benue State Emergency Management Agency, SEMA, Emmanuel Shior who confirmed the development lamented that the state government had been overwhelmed by the humanitarian crisis in the state. Shior said: “That the IDPs have died does not mean that state government is not doing anything. The government is doing its best with local and foreign partners, but you know that the problem is very huge; it’s a very huge humanitarian crisis that we have here in Benue State.
