No fewer than fifteen pregnant women who survived the armed herdsmen terrorists attack on Yelewata community in Guma local government area of Benue State currently staying at the temporary Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp at the Makurdi International Market have delivered new babies.
The Head of Administration of Benue NEMA, Dr. Donald Komgbenda, disclosed this to newsmen while giving an update on the situation in the camp on Monday.
Dr. Komgbenda explained that the affected women had a successful delivery with the help of medical doctors stationed in the camp, stressing that “any case we have here that is above us, it is referred to the Benue State University Teaching Hospital (BSUTH) following an earlier Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) NEMA already had with the hospital.”
He said, “So far we have recorded about 15 pregnant women that have given birth here in the camp. Any case we have that is above us, Benue SEMA has already had a MoU with the BSUTH so we normally refer such cases to the teaching Hospital.”
Dr. Komgbenda explained that when the camp was opened last Saturday, the agency recorded about 190 individuals and 101 households.
“But the number doubled to 2,527 and we continue registering them. As of today, we have about 4,685 individuals and 1,739 households. We also have about 2,960 female, and 1,725 male, and about 122 pregnant women.”
He said the agency is yet to profile everybody, and appealed for patience among the IDPs population to get things right to be able to attend to their needs.
Dr. Komgbenda identified lack of electricity, water, toilets as major challenges facing the IDPs in the camp, said discussions were on to restore normal electricity in the camp.
In the area of WASH, there are no toilets and water and that is is another challenge we are have here in the camp.
He noted that the camp which was before now a market, has about 38 toilets most of which he said are not functional and need to be fixed before educating the victims on how to use them.
He however said NEMA has provided two GP tanks which have been used to supply water to the displaced population all the times.
He announced that UNICEF is also making efforts to revive the manual hand pumped boreholes to address the water challenge in the camp; while the Ministry of Health in conjunction with other partners like Red Cross and WHO have come in to provide other health needs of the victims.
