At the inpatient therapeutic feeding centre in Maiyama General hospital in Kebbi state, Nigeria, where an Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team works, two-year-old Ummul Khairun Mohammed is receiving treatment for severe acute malnutrition. Due to developmental delays caused by the condition, she is still unable to walk.
Ummul is one of thousands of children under five-years-old currently receiving care from MSF teams across northern Nigeria, during the annual peak malnutrition season.
For several days – sometimes up to several weeks – these children receive treatment aimed at stabilising them, addressing medical complications, and promoting rapid weight gain.
While most children recover, many will suffer long-term consequences.
“Malnutrition is not just a short-term emergency — it is a lifelong struggle for many children,” says Dr Jamila Shuaibu Bello, an MSF doctor in the northern state of Kano. “It affects brain development. Malnutrition weakens the immune system, making children more susceptible to communicable diseases. It is also linked to chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension.”
Childhood malnutrition effects last a lifetime
Even a few weeks of experiencing severe malnutrition can severely disrupt a child’s motor development. Affected children may miss key milestones such as crawling by eight–10 months or walking by 18 months. Chronic malnutrition often results in stunting — a condition that impairs mental development, school performance, and cognitive abilities. In girls, stunting can also lead to obstetric complications later in life due to a smaller pelvis size.
If these issues are not addressed early, the damage can be irreversible. To respond to the long-term effects of malnutrition, MSF has introduced two new approaches to our malnutrition treatment.
Restoring movement through paediatric physiotherapy
With the support of the MSF Foundation, which creates new medical tools for the most neglected patients where MSF operates, our teams recently launched paediatric physiotherapy programmes in the northwestern states of Kano and Katsina. These sessions include guided exercises, play-based therapy, and training for caregivers to continue therapy at home. Each intervention is tailored to the child’s developmental stage and condition, helping rebuild strength, coordination, and confidence.
While still in their pilot stage, the two projects are already showing promising results in helping children regain motor functions and achieve developmental milestones.
Thirteen-month-old Usman Aliyu was treated for malnutrition at Unguwa Uku hospital in Kano state before participating in physiotherapy sessions.
“Before Usman fell ill, he could crawl and stand,” says Aisha Aliyu, Usman’s mother. “But he lost those abilities due to the sickness. In the physiotherapy sessions, he was taught to stand again and is now taking steps towards walking.”
An MSF physiotherapist in Kano, Fatima Abdulmajid says, “When I first arrived, I was shocked by the severity of motor delays, but seeing the children’s progress week after week through motor stimulation makes me proud of the work we are doing.”
Mental health support for children and caregivers
Malnutrition also affects mental health. Children are more likely to develop anxiety and depression, while caregivers often feel helpless and overwhelmed as they watch their child grow weak and unresponsive.
To address this, MSF provides psychosocial support as part of our malnutrition projects in several states — including Zamfara, Bauchi, Sokoto, Borno, Kebbi, Kano, and Katsina. Services include play therapy, counselling, and caregiver education to help families manage emotional and behavioural challenges.
“It’s one thing to treat the child medically, and it’s another to assess which areas of development have been emotionally affected,” says Kauna Hope Bako, MSF’s mental health supervisor in Bauchi. “Mental health support helps manage the child’s overall well-being. We stimulate the child emotionally and engage all these areas that have been compromised due to malnutrition.”
The integration of physiotherapy and mental health support into malnutrition treatment marks a critical step toward holistic care that supports a child’s quality of life.
Public health emergency
Malnutrition is a public health emergency in Nigeria. According to UNICEF, an estimated three million children are currently suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in the country — up from 2.6 million in 2024. Of these, 1.65 million are in six conflict-affected northern states – areas that MSF operates in.
MSF has been raising the alarm about the worsening malnutrition situation in northern Nigeria since 2022. In 2024 alone, more than 250,000 children with severe acute malnutrition were admitted to outpatient facilities where MSF works, and 76,000 acutely malnourished children with medical complications to inpatient facilities, representing an increase of 38% and 53% respectively compared to 2023.
This year, anticipating an even earlier start of the peak season that typically runs from June through September, MSF increased inpatient bed capacity, scaled up outpatient therapeutic feeding centres, and hired more staff. We also boosted health promotion activities in several communities that include education on how to prevent, detect and treat malnutrition, and the need to take children for medical treatment early.
From January to May 2025, MSF admitted24,784 severely malnourished children in inpatient therapeutic feeding centres, and 107,461 children in outpatient therapeutic feeding centres in northern Nigeria, an increase of 13 per cent compared to the same period in 2024.
The persistent malnutrition crisis in northern Nigeria stems from a variety of factors such as inflation, food insecurity, insufficient healthcare infrastructure, ongoing security issues, and disease outbreaks worsened by low vaccine coverage. The situation is further exacerbated by funding shortages for the already inadequate nutrition response.
To address such a complex issue, a holistic approach is needed from all local and international agencies and organisations involved — not only to treat malnourished children in the short term, but also to tackle the long-term consequences of malnutrition.
MSF manages 11 inpatient therapeutic feeding centres and over 30 outpatient therapeutic feeding centres in seven states in northeast and northwest Nigeria: Borno, Bauchi, Kano, Kebbi, Zamfara, Sokoto and Katsina.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Médecins sans frontières (MSF).
