KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The findings from the FMS showed concerning food consumption deficits and limited diversity of diets in the inaccessible areas surveyed. More than one in every two households (62 percent) struggled to have sufficient food intake and 80 percent experienced a crisis or higher levels (CH Phase 3 and above) of food deprivation and hunger, further evidenced in the pervasive use of food-based coping strategies;

• More than two in every three households relied on either crisis (19.4 percent) or emergency (49.6percent) coping strategies to meet their food needs, which heightens economic vulnerability due to the negative impact on the future productivity of the most affected households;

• The levels of acute malnutrition among new arrivals from the inaccessible areas is Critical (Phase 4 IPC Acute Malnutrition Classification) with the overall Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates at 22.1% and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) at 9.0%. The high levels of acute malnutrition reported during the reporting period (harvest) indicate that the new arrivals population's access to adequate and other underlying causes of acute malnutrition does not change with seasonality.

• In-depth LGA analysis shows very high levels of acute malnutrition among new arrivals in Damboa LGA at unprecedented 48.7% GAM rates (Extremely Critical Phase 5). Other LGAs with levels of acute malnutrition at Critical (Phase 4) included Bama and Kukawa.

• Overall, both crude and under-five mortality rates were above the emergency threshold of 1 death/10,000 population/day and 2 deaths/10,000 population/day respectively with values of 2.70 deaths/10,000 persons/day for CMR and 3.97 deaths /10,000 under-fives/day. • The elevated levels of consumption gaps, malnutrition, mortality, and pervasive usage of emergency coping strategies, is largely underscored by the limited availability of food stocks, restricted access to functional markets and water, health and sanitation services, which might heighten morbidity risk and impact households' ability to engage in labor for food or resource gathering.