Team DailyPedia
Around 214 pregnant women retrieved from Islamist Boko Haram militants in Northeast Nigeria last week, according to news report came from the Chief of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Authorities have revealed it freed roughly 700 women.
Giving this update in Lagos, UNFPA Nigeria executive director Babatunde Oshotimehin said, “Already, 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.”
It was discovered that some of the children freed in captivity along with women were born in the forest and had never reached open place until they were cleared from the Sambisa Forest in Borno State, she added.
Ostimehin said the organization, in anticipation of the problem on hand, had prerequisitely worked with a team that collaborates with the Federal and state governments, to preserve the dignity of the girls, who he said, are facing severe psychosocial trauma.
Speaking of rescued women’s condition, he explained that most of them, due to long state of being held, required intense counselling one by one.
“What we found is that some of the women and girls that have come back actually have much more in terms of the stress they have faced, so the counselling has to be more intense and working with them one-on-one.
“I’m glad the communities are not excommunicating them and are taking them back. That is an important therapy too. We anticipate this is going to escalate because the military intervention is continuing, we find that more people are now needing our services and we will continue,” he said.
Furthermore, he said that UNFPA had earlier cooperated with federal and state governments to train 60 counsellors to offer ‘psychosocial services to the affected women and children’.
“UNFPA is providing dignity for women. In conflict and disasters, most people would only think of water and sanitation, provision of tents and housing, and food, which are all important. But women and girls have specific needs that nobody else looks after; it is only UNFPA that is doing this. We are giving psychosocial counselling.
“Beyond that, in the growing young people, we will always have pregnant women, but nobody segregates the needs of the pregnant women which are very important and different from the needs of the average community. We look after them, and ensure they get antenatal care and that they deliver properly and that they even get Caesarean Section when necessary.
In 2014, UNFPA aided deliveries around 16,000 pregnancies in the troubled North East part of the country.
On Friday (African Time), Nigerian military announced it has rescued 234 women and children who had been held in captivity in the forest. According to reports, over 677 females were rescued last week.
Boko Haram extremist, founded in 2002, whose name officially means “Western education is forbidden.” The group acclaimed infamous spotlight as a consequence of kidnapping 200 girls from Chibok, a village in Borno state, following the operations in selling them like goods at markets.
Over the past six years, It was reported that militants have killed more than 13,000 people to establish covert military propaganda in creating a fully Islamic state in northeastern Nigeria. The Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist has been carrying out mass kidnapping and massacres after reaching unprecendented power, resource, and notoriety. The Nigerian terrorist group has recently pronounced its relationship, without ambiguity, to the Islamic militants.
