Attachments
Highlights
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Mauritania is the single largest recipient of refugees fleeing the conflict in Mali. 74,148 refugees are living in the Mbéra camp.
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60% of the refugees are children and many have been in the camp for over a year, resulting in overlapping emergency and medium term needs.
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Refugee children face a range of threats to their health, nutrition, education and family lives. Many have experienced severe trauma and are suffering from malnutrition and need specialised attention and care.
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UNICEF, in coordination with UNHCR and partners, are providing education in the camp for 7,070 children (49% girls) in six schools and psychosocial stimulation for 1,028 children at four child friendly spaces. Since 2012, 1,538 children have been treated for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM).
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A ‘Child Health Week’ focused on children under five in the camp and host communities immunization and malnutrition screening as part of African Vaccination Week.
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Communities hosting the refugees are very poor and suffer high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition. UNICEF is helping to reinforce basic services, including malnutrition treatment.
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More resources are needed to fill gaps, including almost 10,000 children, more than half of the school age children in the camp, not getting an education.
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In 2013, the expected national caseload of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) is 122,719 children under five years, including 23,901 cases of SAM. The post-harvest GAM prevalence was 5.6% and is expected to increase significantly in the summer lean season.
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Preventative blanket feeding, cash transfers and programmes to build longer term resilience are all being planned and will be implemented from May, ahead of the lean season. A multi- sectorial package of services is being scaled up from 291 to all 488 nutrition centres as part of the response to high rates of malnutrition.