Northern Nigeria is currently facing an alarming malnutrition crisis, Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, said on Friday.
MSF in a statement by the Field Communication Officer, Abdulkareem Yakubu, said, in Katsina State, for instance, where it has been present since 2021, the teams are seeing an ever-increasing number of malnourished children in its therapeutic feeding centres, with increasingly severe conditions and higher mortality rates.
Earlier this week, the World Food Programme announced it will be forced to suspend all emergency food and nutrition aid for 1.3 million people in Northeast Nigeria by the end of July due to ‘critical funding shortfalls’.
A food security survey carried out by humanitarian organizations in the local government area of Kaita, in Katsina state, before the lean season began at the start of 2025 revealed that over 90 per cent of households had reduced the number of meals they ate each day.
Across the north, other factors worsening the malnutrition crisis include disease outbreaks worsened by low vaccine coverage, availability and accessibility of basic health services, and other socioeconomic indices complicated by insecurity and violence.
MSF, however, noted that in collaboration with the local authorities, emergency prevention and distribution of nutritional supplements has started for 66,000 children in Mashi Local Government Area.
“In the context of drastic cuts in international funding, the need for prevention and treatment of malnutrition is enormous in northern Nigeria, and urgent mobilisation is required. By the end of June 2025, nearly 70,000 malnourished children had already received medical care from our teams in Katsina State, including nearly 10,000 who were hospitalised in serious condition.
Without taking into account the new healthcare facilities opened by MSF during the year in the state, this represents an increase of approximately one-third compared to last year. In addition, between January and June 2025, the number of malnourished children with nutritional oedema, the most severe and deadly form of malnutrition, rose by 208 per cent compared with the same period in 2024.
“Unfortunately, 652 children have already died in our facilities since the beginning of 2025 due to a lack of timely access to care. A worrying sign of the growing severity of this major public health emergency is that adults—particularly women, including pregnant and breastfeeding women—are also affected”, MSF noted.
The international organisation stated that a screening carried out in July in all five MSF malnutrition centres in Katsina State on 750 mothers of patients revealed that more than half of adult caregivers were acutely malnourished, including 13 per cent with severe acute malnutrition.
To cope with the massive influx of children expected by the end of the lean season in October, MSF said it has increased its support to local authorities in several states in northern Nigeria, where we provide care to the population.
“In Katsina state, for instance, we opened a new Ambulatory Therapeutic Feeding Centre in Mashi and an additional Inpatient Therapeutic Feeding Centre in Turai, to provide a total of 900 beds in two MSF-supported hospitals,” it added.
The country representative of MSF in Nigeria, Ahmed Aldikhari, explained that, “The year 2024 marked a turning point in northern Nigeria’s nutritional crisis, with an increase of 25 per cent from the previous year.
“But the true scale of the crisis exceeds all predictions. We are currently witnessing massive budget cuts, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, which are having a real impact on the treatment of malnourished children.
At the same time, we observe ever-increasing needs, such as in Katsina State, where an increasing number of people cannot afford to buy food anymore, even though it is available in markets.”
On his part, the nutrition referent at MSF, Emmanuel Berbain, said, “The most urgent way to reduce the risk of immediate death from malnutrition is to ensure families have access to food.
“This can be done through large-scale distribution of food or nutritional supplements, as we are currently doing in the Mashi area, or through cash distributions when and where it is possible.”
MSF added that the capacity to care for and treat malnourished children must also be expanded, both by increasing the number of beds in health facilities and by providing funding and access to Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food.
“These actions must be undertaken as a priority in areas where the needs – i.e. the number of malnourished children – are greatest.
People over the age of five, who are also increasingly affected by malnutrition but are currently not covered by any assistance, should also be included in prevention programs.
On July 8, the Vice President Kashim Shettima publicly sounded the alarm on the scale of malnutrition in Nigeria, warning that it deprives almost 40 per cent of children under the age of five of their full physical and cognitive potential. He described the situation as a national emergency requiring urgent and collective action.
Meanwhile, MSF treated over 300,000 malnourished children in seven northern states in 2024, a 25 per cent increase from 2023.
“In the Northwest alone, where MSF tackles malnutrition in the states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, and Zamfara, we have already treated almost 100,000 children suffering from severe and moderate acute malnutrition in outpatient treatment centres in the first six months of 2025 and hospitalised around 25,000 malnourished children,” the statement concluded.
