KANO, Nigeria — Lead poisoning has killed more than 400 children under the age of five as a result of contamination from illegal gold extraction in northern Nigeria, an international aid agency said on Tuesday.
The children died over the last six months in several villages in Zamfara state, where lead-rich run-off from illegal gold mining has entered the soil and water supply, said Medecines Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF).
"Based on the record of fatalities from lead poisoning, more than 400 children have died in the last six months," said El-Shafii Muhammad Ahmad, MSF project director in Zamfara.
"But we in MSF believe the figure is much more than that," he told AFP by telephone.
Preliminary findings by UN experts on the contamination in Zamfara state, which were released on Tuesday, said that "growing amounts of children are dying from lead poisoning."
Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP in Geneva that more than 3,000 children lived in seven affected villages in an area of high-intensity wildcat gold mining.
Byrs said many parents were afraid to come forward when their children fell ill, or mistook symptoms including convulsions with malaria.
Read the whole story www.google.com
Comments