Nigeria

More than 3 million people are on the brink of starvation in northeast Nigeria amid the fight against extremist group, Boko Haram, and curable diseases and polio have resurfaced as well. The UN and other humanitarian groups underestimated the situation’s severity, and it may now be too dangerous to send aid workers to the region.

Medical doctors in Ekiti State have decried the increasing rate of insecurity among health workers in the state. This is against the backdrop of the recent waves of kidnapping of doctors and health workers in the state. On Thursday, unknown gunmen abducted a former Chief Medical Director of Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital (EKSUTH), Dr. Patrick Adegun, and his wife, Kikelomo. The abduction is coming five days after a senior nurse with the Federal Medical Centre, Ido Ekiti, Mrs Margaret Aladeneka, was abducted while a yet-to-be identified man was killed during the operation.

In early December, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on “global health and foreign policy.” As the title suggests, it was a bit of a grab bag, covering issues such as vaccines, strengthening health systems, and Ebola. But the resolution also included the General Assembly’s strongest statement yet on the issue of attacks on health workers, facilities, and patients, and called on governments to act to ensure health workers and patients are safe and facilities protected from attack.

(Geneva, May 16, 2014) – Hundreds of attacks on health workers have occurred in dozens of countries around the world since 2012, Human Rights Watch and the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition said in a joint report released today. The report, released in advance of a meeting on May 19 to 24, 2014, of health ministers from around the world, called on governments to do more to protect patients, health workers and facilities from attack in countries undergoing conflict and civil unrest. The 28-page report, “Under Attack: Violence against health workers, patients and facilities,” highlights recent attacks in countries around the world.

Fear and secrecy have cloaked the roll-out of a polio campaign currently underway in northern Nigeria. Vaccinators are concealing their identities, hiding vaccinations under their veils and visiting some areas only with undercover armed guards, following the February murder by Boko Haram of nine polio workers in the northern city of Kano.