Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres has raised an alarm over the deplorable water situation in Gwoza and Pulka Internally Displaced Persons camps in Borno.
The Head of Mission, Luis Eguiluz, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Wednesday that the situation was increasing the cases of water borne diseases, especially as the rainy season sets in.
According to him, there is presently poor personal hygiene among the population due to inadequate access to water, as the quantity of water per person falls under emergency levels.
Eguiluz said: “MSF conducted an assessment of the water situation and water availability is not sufficient, especially in GSS and Wakane camps in Gwoza and all IDPs camps in Pulka, with present levels below five litres and eight litres per person respectively.
“In addition, lack of water availability increases tensions with the host community within the population in camps and pushes families, especially women to adopt harmful coping strategies to access water.’’
He said one of the coping strategies was to risk abduction and killing by armed groups while attempting to fetch water or firewood to sell outside the security perimeter.
According to him, during the past nine months, several alerts have been raised by IDPs and the humanitarian actors related to access to shelter and water availability.
Eguiluz added that the situation had not improved.
He underscored the need for immediate action of all humanitarian agencies and donours to ensure quick and effective solutions to improve water availability.
Eguiluz said there was the need for a short and medium term solutions such as water trucking and immediate repair of present infrastructure to reduce the continued deficits and risks to health and lives.
The head of mission said the organisation had been implementing the programmes in the two camps since 2016, by providing medical support through primary and secondary health care.
He said its humanitarian interventions also include the distributing of Non-Food items, shelter, food, water and sanitation since 2017.
Speaking further about Gwoza, he said the available water points were usually emptied within one hour, saying the total IDPs population of 3,775 were growing with the arrival of new displaced persons daily.
He said it was saddening that the quality of water could not be tested as there was no access to water testing laboratories.
He said: “From our observation, Chlorination is not done properly, MSF does not have access to water quality analysis, there are clear concerns on the use of non-clean water as women also fetch water from open wells for drinking purposes.
“Dirty ropes and containers are in contact with the water inside the wells, and children also re-collect the standard water near water points and mix them with the collected water from the tanks.’’
Eguiluz said in Pulka camp, lack of water availability was affecting the entire population, host community and IDPs, and said that the more than 60,000 population, 40,878 of them face water crisis.
He said the health consequences of these issues were a 33 per cent increase in water borne diseases, with 78 per cent of them from the camps.
He said: “From mid-January to mid-march, in MSF hospital, we have treated 135 cases of acute water diarrhea, while in 2017, for the same cases, we treated only 31 cases.
“MSF also regularly receives patients with skin diseases resulting from hygiene problems related to water scarcity.’’
He added that the continuous arrival of new IDPs and returnees were additional risk factors of acute water diarrhea and potential cases of cholera.
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