The United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), on Sunday said about 214 of the 687 women and girls so far rescued by the Nigerian Army from the dreaded Sambisa Forest in Borno State are at various stages of pregnancy.
Addressing newsmen in Lagos, UNFPA’s Executive Director, Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin said:“Consequently, since we have discovered that the magnitude of the challenge on ground is huge and there aren’t sufficient human resources to cope with this, we have sought for foreign assistance in human resources to help in the recovery process for these women and young girls.”
Addressing newsmen in Lagos, UNFPA’s Executive Director, Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin said:“Consequently, since we have discovered that the magnitude of the challenge on ground is huge and there aren’t sufficient human resources to cope with this, we have sought for foreign assistance in human resources to help in the recovery process for these women and young girls.”
Osotimehin is in the country to establish the level of activity that is being coordinated by the UNFPA country office since the army began to free many of the abducted women and with many more others in various camps returning to their traditional homes, so as to facilitate more assistance to federal government.
He said the assistance needed for the freed women and girls would include essentially psycho-social and trauma management among others.
Speaking on his encounter with some of the returnees and freed women, the UNFPA boss who was also a former minister of health said, “I saw so many women and children who have so much stress written all over them, some were lost in their lonely world oblivious of where they are and many showed signs that they obviously had been traumatized by their various experiences.
“There is no doubt that these women and their children had gone through so much since they were abducted or kidnapped and it would definitely take a lot of effort to give them the needed psycho-social support in order to reintegrate them into the real lives they had been used to prior the abduction”,observed Osotimehin.
According to him, “Already, as at yesterday (Saturday), many of them are undergoing screening for various diseases, infections including HIV/AIDS and about 214 of those already screened were discovered to be at various stages of pregnancies, some visibly pregnant and some just tested pregnant; but we are supporting all of them with various levels of care to stabilize them”.
No comments:
Post a Comment