Key Takeaways

• The findings from the HSM showed concerning food consumption deficits and limited diversity of diets in the inaccessible areas surveyed. About 52 percent of the surveyed households struggled to have sufficient food intake and 74 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
• 49 percent of the households relied on crisis 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 are serious (Phase 4 IPC Acute Malnutrition Classification) with the overall Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates of 19.2 percent and Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) at 6.2 percent. The high levels of acute malnutrition indicate an extremely stressed population in relation to food insecurity, poor water, and sanitation access, and poor health conditions as the key underlying causes of acute malnutrition.
• Detailed analysis among new arrival population with good quality and adequate sample size showed extremely critical (Phase 5) in two of the areas analyzed and Critical (Phase 4) in three of the areas analyzed. According to the HSM results, a sizeable proportion of the children (6-59 months) are suffering from stunting and underweight. This is characteristic of a chronically stressed situation of poor nutrition and persistent infection.
• Overall, both crude and under five mortality rates (CMR and U5MR) had always been above emergency threshold of 1 deaths/10,000 population/day and 2 death/10,000 children <5yr/day, respectively; as they had always been over the periods of this Humanitarian Situation Monitoring. We are not able to conduct any analysis on mortality in this edition because the data we collected was not up-to-date as regards the recall period. It is therefore, important that we watch for the most nutritionally vulnerable LGAs as seen in previous editions of this HSM Bulletin.
• The elevated levels of consumption gaps, malnutrition, mortality, and unsustainable usage of emergency coping strategies, is largely driven by the limited availability of food stocks, restricted access to functional markets and poor water, health and sanitation services, which might heighten morbidity risk, and, impact more negatively on households' ability to engage in labour for food or resource gathering.