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About 250,000 children displaced by a jihadist insurgency in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province are at risk of disease as the rainy season sets in, said UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.
About 2,400 people, more than half of whom are civilians, have died since October 2017, when a shadowy jihadist group began their campaign in the gas-rich province, according to a tally compiled by ACLED, an American NGO.
The government says 570,000 people have fled their homes.
“In less than two years, the children and families of Cabo Delgado have faced a devastating cyclone, floods, drought, socio-economic hardship linked to the pandemic and the COVID-19 conflict,” said the director UNICEF executive Henrietta Fore in a statement released Tuesday evening. .
“As conditions in the province deteriorate further – especially with the onset of the rainy season – water, sanitation and health care systems are under increasing strain.
Unicef has highlighted the risk of diarrhea, a disease that is easily curable and preventable, but often fatal in young children if left untreated.
Two out of five children in the northern province already suffer from chronic malnutrition “and more cases of severe acute malnutrition are detected among the displaced population,” the statement said.
Unicef is appealing for $ 52.8 million (€ 43.3 million) to respond to the most urgent humanitarian needs in Mozambique in 2021, of which $ 30 million would go to Cabo Delgado.
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