The Nigerian Air Force is giving free medical care to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) living in makeshift camps across Borno State.
More than 130,000 locals from the twenty local councils dislodged by insurgents are living in camps spread across the capital city or elsewhere.
Battered and traumatised, many are dealing with one illness or the other.
For the sick, the Nigerian Air Force’s intervention could not have come at a better time.
The elderly, women and children constitute the bulk of the population in most Internally Displaced People’s camps.
Most able bodied young men have left the camps to eke out a living elsewhere, leaving only the vulnerable group in the camps scrambling for a portion of what caregivers have got to offer.
Dalori Camp, home to over 20,000 displaced persons, has played host to the Air Force medical team.
‘To Get Involved’
An ailing IDP, Bukar Shettima, said: “I have had High blood pressure for 10 years so when I heard that soldiers have brought free medication for us with doctors to attend to us I was happy and that’s why I am here. We thank them”.
Zarah Mohammed has received little assistant from the camp clinic, which lacks the drug she needs for her treatment.
“I have back and body pains and sometimes I even passed out. The camp clinic prescribed some drugs but it is not available here so they asked me to buy them in town but I don’t have any money. That’s why I am here to see the Air Force doctors,” Zarah said.
Commanding Officer of the Nigerian Air Force Medical Center Maiduguri, Wing Comm. Solomon Iliya, said the intervention programme was on the insistence of Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshall Sadiq Abubakar, to serve as an example to cooperate bodies to get involved in the humanitarian crisis in north-east Nigeria.
Dalori is the fourth camp to benefit from the Air Force’s intervention.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the Boko Haram insurgency has left at least 1.5 million people displaced within Nigeria, mainly in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States.
Counter-terrorism operations have continued in the nation’s north-east in efforts to end the over five years of insurgency. The Boko Haram terrorists are trying to establish an Islamic state in the region and end western education.
