NIGERIA: Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) attacks a lack of action by government to tackle a lead poisoning epidemic that has killed 400 children near a gold mine

Record ID: 235635

  • Title: NIGERIA: Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) attacks a lack of action by government to tackle a lead poisoning epidemic that has killed 400 children near a gold mine
  • Date: 12th May 2012
  • Summary: CHILDREN PLAYING ON GROUND A CHILD RECEIVING MEDICAL ATTENTION DOCTOR ATTENDING TO THE CHILD WHILE MOTHER LOOKS ON WOMAN ADMINISTERING ORAL MEDICATION TO A CHILD WOMEN AND CHILDREN AT A CLINIC
  • Embargoed: 27th May 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Disasters / Accidents / Natural catastrophes,Nature / Environment,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA6ZA3T9XOUAE8ZB1AXLRX0ET9P
  • Story Text: Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) decried on Friday (May 11) a lack of action by Nigeria's government to tackle a lead poisoning epidemic that has killed 400 children and poisoned ten times as many near a gold mine.
    The ministers of mines, environment and health were scheduled to attend a two-day conference on the lead poisoning in northern Nigeria's remote Zamfara state organised by MSF ending on Thursday. None of them showed up.
    The ministers were not immediately available for comment.
    Ivan Gayton, Medecins Frontieres representative in Nigeria expressed the need for urgent measures to be taken by Nigeria's government to provide relevant assistance.
    "There are 1,500 more children in a village called Bagega who are still living in contaminated circumstances. We cannot treat them, they are suffering, they are dying and there is nothing we can do because if they are not living in clean circumstances we can't help them with medical treatment; medical treatment is ineffective so we are waiting for the government of Nigeria to be able to come up with the money and the resources to do the environmental remediation which will allow us to do our job," he said.
    MSF said a promised funding of 800 million naira (5.08 million U.S. dollars) was never materialised.
    "There has been an enormous amount of talk of funding, there has been very little release of funding. Very specifically, there has been a tripartite funding proposal which is for 850 million naira which is for environmental remediation and safer mining which since November has been awaiting release. This 850 million naira will be an amazing first step toward addressing the problem in Zamfara state," Gayton added.
    MSF is hopeful that Nigeria's government will realise the scale of the problem and take action.
    "But I really hope that the children of Zamfara will see more action from this government and from this country and that's why we are holding this conference. Not only to share our knowledge and to share the best practices about medicine and environmental remediation, about safer mining but also to call for action," he said.
    In 2010, a Nigerian health ministry official reported that lead poisoning caused by illegal gold mining had killed 163 Nigerians, most of them children, in remote villages, in the space of just a few months.
    Since then, the mining has continued and some 4,000 children of the miners, often from desperately poor backgrounds where other sources of income are meagre, have been contaminated.
    Miners return from work dusted with lead, which then pollutes their homes.
    Children are particularly vulnerable because their growing nervous systems can be permanently damaged.
    The villages affected, such as Dareta and Giadanbuzu, are in the poor, arid Sahel region on the southern fringe of the Sahara, where many people work as miners and subsistence farmers. No action has been taken to help them.
    Africa's most populous country has a poor record on environmental protection, evidenced by the huge amounts of crude oil that it spills each year in the swamps of the Niger Delta.
    END
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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