A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Africa's largest economy is also home to the world's largest number of food-insecure people. In northern Nigeria, children are suffering from acute malnutrition. Aid groups call it a nearly unprecedented crisis. Here's NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu.
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EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: At a packed hospital ward, scores of babies and toddlers fight to stay alive. There are about 70 children, some as young as 6 months old, that fill this ward at the specialist hospital in Sokoto City, northwest Nigeria. And it's utterly desperate. Some of the children are gasping, struggling to breathe or take fluids. This ward deals with malnutrition because malnutrition rates in northwest Nigeria are soaring.
MUHAMMAD SALIH: I think last week, from Monday to Friday, we had mortality every day. As I'm talking to you now, two files were just dropped on my table now that they died last night.
AKINWOTU: Muhammad Salih is the lead doctor at the ward. He works for Doctors Without Borders, which supports the hospital to tackle severe malnutrition among children under 5 years old.
SALIH: The most common complications we have seen here is sepsis, acute diarrheal disease - diarrhea, vomiting.
AKINWOTU: This unit treats only a fraction of the critical cases in this region. But the numbers are rising more quickly than he's ever seen, and this is why.
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AKINWOTU: Forty-five-year-old Murtala Muhammed (ph) has sold yams and potatoes at the Sokoto Central Market for over a decade.
MURTALA MUHAMMED: (Speaking Hausa).
AKINWOTU: Muhammed says the prices of yams and potatoes have tripled in the last year alone, along with other staples like tomatoes, peppers, millet and guinea corn. And he's never seen prices rise this quickly before.
MUHAMMED: (Through interpreter) Three years ago, I would have about 70 to 80 customers a day. Now I have less than 15 to 20 customers. And what they buy is much less than they did before.
AKINWOTU: This period has been brutal and unimaginable in a region rich with farmland. It's also been made worse by another crisis, insecurity.
MUHAMMED: (Through interpreter) The insecurity is making things so expensive because the farms where they produce these crops have been dominated by the bandits. It's not safe to farm anymore.
AKINWOTU: Armed groups known as bandits have kidnapped and killed thousands of people and displaced millions, including farmers, who can no longer access their land. The worst of the crisis began when the new Nigerian government adopted a set of reforms praised by institutions like the World Bank and IMF. A fuel subsidy was officially ended, and much-criticized currency controls were loosened. But the impact has been profound. The price of fuel has almost tripled and inflation has soared. The effects have crippled crucial food supply chains in one of the poorest parts of the world. Back at the hospital, 2-year-old Yakuba Takur (ph) rests in his mother's arms.
YAHANA TAKUR: (Speaking Hausa).
AKINWOTU: When his mother, 32-year-old Yahana Takur (ph), brought him here a few days ago, she feared he was about to die.
TAKUR: (Through interpreter) He was vomiting. He was so weak. He couldn't even eat. I was so afraid.
AKINWOTU: Medical staff from MSF said he had a highly fatal condition caused by a deficiency of protein. After just a few days of treatment, he improved. But she's afraid of what will happen after he's well again.
TAKUR: (Through interpreter) We eat very little. I have five children. Sometimes I don't eat because there's only enough for them to manage. And even after they've eaten, they're still hungry.
AKINWOTU: Without help, she won't be able to feed him well enough to prevent him from coming back.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Sokoto, Nigeria. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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