By Paul Carsten
ABUJA, April 20 (Reuters) - An aid worker employed by
humanitarian agency Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) died in the
northeast Nigerian state of Borno after contracting the new
coronavirus, a spokesman for the organisation said on Sunday.
Borno is at the epicentre of one of the world's worst
humanitarian crises, spawned by a decade-long Islamist militant
insurgency that has left 7 million people in need of aid.
The death of an aid worker in a part of Africa's most
populous country where camps house many of the roughly two
million people displaced by the insurgency will prompt fears of
the highly infectious lung disease spreading quickly among
malnourished people, many of whom suffer from other diseases.
An MSF spokesman confirmed the death of one of the aid
agency's workers but did not provide further details. The
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) late on Sunday said it
had recorded a cumulative total of 627 confirmed cases and 21
deaths - including one in Borno. No further details were given.
The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria,
Edward Kallon, in a statement earlier on Sunday said camps for
displaced people needed to be decongested due to the pandemic
and a number of fires in the last few days.
"With the COVID-19 pandemic slowly spreading across the
country, I am extremely worried about the 1.8 million IDPs
(internally displaced people)," he said. "Camp decongestion has
been a challenge, but it is now a priority," he added.
Kallon said the United Nations and international aid
organisations were working to expand the camps. He said half of
the camps in Borno are currently overcrowded with nearly 700,000
displaced people living in cramped conditions.
Africa has seen more than 17,000 confirmed cases of the
COVID-19 disease and around 1,000 deaths so far - relatively few
compared to some other regions.
But there are fears numbers could balloon within weeks,
particularly in areas with poor sanitation facilities, and
overwhelm already stretched health services.
Last week a regional World Health Organization official said
coronavirus cases in the world's poorest continent could shoot
up from thousands now to 10 million within three to six months
according to provisional modelling.