Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation founded in Paris, France in 1971. MSF delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and exclusion from healthcare. It offers assistance to people based on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation and it brings humanitarian medical assistance to victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics or healthcare exclusion.
Fincons supported MSF’s 2019 Christmas project to fight the malnourishment emergency in the State of Borno in Nigeria, where the ONG has been in since 2016.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT
Nigeria is the most populous State in Africa and its residents represent 1% of the worldwide population. It is a country with a high inequality rate between northern areas, in the greatest difficulty, and southern ones.
The State of Borno is situated in the north-east area of Nigeria (on the border with Niger, Chad and Cameroon) and its capital is Maiduguri. Because of the armed uprising the healthcare is extremely compromised: only 40% of health structures are operative and access to the essential healthcare, such as treatment for malaria or basic vaccination coverage, is very hard to get. The lack of adequately qualified staff, of medical provisions and financial resources are some of the main obstacles to access of healthcare.
THE PROJECT
With its 2019 Christmas project MSF wanted to ensure medical-nutritional care to respond to the malnourishment emergency, with the objective of fighting the maternal and infant deaths and grave nutritional needs of more than an estimated 500,000 displaced people in Maiduguri that have escaped from violence.
Fincons Group has always supported social solidarity initiatives in healthcare as well as providing social-sanitary services for populations in Africa and especially initiatives dedicated to expecting women and children.
We decided to support MSF’s project with a donation, which combines healthcare for mothers and children to fight the malnutrition and healthcare.
GOALS ACHIEVED
MSF's interventions have resulted in improved access to health services for malnourished children and a surveillance system for epidemic diseases (cholera, meningitis, …) has been created, this enables rapid medical response. In addition to this, healthcare was ensured in IDP sites - Internal Displaced People - with the involvement of local authorities. Health promotion initiatives have encouraged the dissemination of information on the topic of prevention and the nutritional services available, as well as making training possible within communities. Treatment of HIV/TB patients, hospitalized or through home follow-up, has increased.
To provide some numbers, the population of Maiduguri, especially children between the ages of 1 month and 10 years, now have access to free medical care provided by MSF through nutritional therapy centers. MSF operates a 72-bed nutritional intensive care center in Maiduguri and the number of beds can increase to 100 in the peak season between May and October. The average number of severely malnourished children who are hospitalized each month at the center is 290. Finally, 133,000 outpatient visits were made to children in 2019.