(UNICEF) – Ajija is as frail as you possibly can be when alive. The four-year-old should be actively playing with friends but she can barely stand. When she is checked by a health worker, she is unsurprisingly registered as severely malnourished. “I feel helpless as I can’t do anything, during the past two years life has been hard, there is little food and many illnesses,” her mother Halima says desperately to me. This is Gwoza, a remote area of Borno state, on Nigeria’s northeastern border with Cameroon. The makeshift health clinic is packed with mothers bringing their babies and young children for malnutrition screening and treatment.
