Northern Nigeria is currently facing an alarming malnutrition crisis. In Katsina state, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been present since 2021, the teams are seeing an ever-increasing number of malnourished children in its therapeutic feeding centers, with increasingly severe conditions.
The reasons for northern Nigeria’s malnutrition crisis are complex, including economic factors that have made food unaffordable for many people, insecurity and violence affecting large regions, disease outbreaks worsened by low vaccine coverage, and a lack of other basic health services. Cuts to international aid now threaten to deepen the crisis.
Since 2022, MSF has witnessed an increasing trend in the rising number of children admitted for malnutrition in its facilities across northern Nigeria. MSF runs nutrition projects in seven states in Nigeria: Borno, Bauchi, Katsina, Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, and Kebbi.
MSF has treated almost 70,000 children in Katsina state as of June
In Katsina state alone, nearly 70,000 malnourished children have already received medical care from our teams in the first six months of 2025, including nearly 10,000 who were hospitalized, which is an increase of approximately one-third compared to last year.
In addition, between January and June 2025, the number of malnourished children with nutritional edema (swelling of the body due to severe and deadly malnutrition) more than tripled compared with the same period in 2024.
Unfortunately, 652 children have already died in our facilities in Katsina state since the beginning of 2025 due to a lack of timely access to care. A worrying sign of the growing severity of this major public health emergency, is that adults—particularly women, including pregnant and breastfeeding women—are also affected. A screening carried out in July in all five MSF malnutrition centers in Katsina state on 750 mothers of patients revealed that more than half of adult caregivers were acutely malnourished, including 13 percent with severe acute malnutrition.
MSF is stepping up support to nutrition programs
To cope with the massive influx of children expected by the end of the lean season in October, MSF has increased its support to local authorities in several states in northern Nigeria where we provide care to the population. In Katsina state for instance, we opened a new mobile therapeutic feeding center in Mashi and an additional inpatient therapeutic feeding center in Turai, to provide a total of 900 beds in two MSF-supported hospitals.
In collaboration with the local authorities, MSF has also started an emergency prevention distribution of nutritional supplements for 66,000 children in Mashi.
“The year 2024 marked a turning point in northern Nigeria's nutritional crisis, with an increase of 25 percent from the previous year. But the true scale of the crisis exceeds all predictions,” explains Ahmed Aldikhari, country representative of MSF in Nigeria.
Nigeria is currently witnessing massive budget cuts, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, which are having a real impact on the treatment of malnourished children. "At the same time, we observe ever-increasing needs, such as in Katsina state, where an increasing number of people cannot afford to buy food anymore, even though it is available in markets,” Aldikhari adds.
A food security survey carried out by humanitarian organizations in the local government area of Kaita, in Katsina state, before the lean season began at the start of 2025 revealed that over 90 percent of households had reduced the number of meals they ate each day.
MSF’s programs are not directly affected by funding cuts, but MSF cannot replace programs being cut. Last week, for example, the World Food Program announced it will be forced to suspend all emergency food and nutrition aid for 1.3 million people in northeast Nigeria by the end of July due to “critical funding shortfalls.”
Two mothers feed therapeutic foods to their children at the Kofar Marusa mobile therapeutic feeding center in Katsina state. Nigeria 2024 © Abba Adamu Musa/MSF
Food access must be ensured to avoid malnutrition deaths
“The most urgent way to reduce the risk of immediate death from malnutrition is to ensure families have access to food,” says Emmanuel Berbain, nutrition advisor at MSF. “This can be done through large-scale distribution of food or nutritional supplements, as we are currently doing in the Mashi area, or through cash distributions when and where it is possible.”
The capacity to care for and treat malnourished children must also be expanded, both by increasing the number of beds in health facilities and by providing funding and access to ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). These actions must be undertaken as a priority in areas where the needs are greatest.
People over the age of 5, who are also increasingly affected by malnutrition but are currently not covered by any assistance, should also be included in prevention programs.
Malnutrition is a national emergency in Nigeria
On July 8, Nigeria's Vice President Kashim Shettima publicly sounded the alarm on the scale of malnutrition in Nigeria, warning that it deprives almost 40 percent of children under the age of 5 of their full physical and cognitive potential. He described the situation as a national emergency requiring urgent and collective action.
In the northwest alone, where MSF is fighting malnutrition in the states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, and Zamfara, we have already treated almost 100,000 children suffering from severe and moderate acute malnutrition in outpatient treatment centers in the first six months of 2025 and hospitalized around 25,000 malnourished children.
