Policy Brief

A Contagious Skin Disease in Borno IDP Camps

November 13, 2025
By admin

Introduction

About half of Nigeria’s 3.3 million internally displaced persons live in Borno State, forced from their homes by the protracted Boko Haram insurgency. Their houses, schools, and towns have been destroyed, and access to social services, such as education and healthcare, has been severely disrupted. As a result, they now rely on humanitarian aid to survive. Those displaced within their own country due to conflict, violence, or disaster are mostly accommodated in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. As of December 2023, there were about 62 camps in Borno State, jointly managed by the federal government and the Borno State government in close collaboration with the United Nations agencies, humanitarian organisations, and local and international non-governmental organisations.

These camps grapple with severe challenges, including overcrowding, food and nutrition crises, lack of safe drinking water and sanitation, and limited access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. These conditions make IDPs highly vulnerable to disease outbreaks.

What’s new?

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s report on the displacement crisis in Borno highlights how overcrowding in IDP camps worsens health risks, leading to outbreaks of diseases of public concern, such as cholera, and exacerbates child malnourishment. To mitigate these risks, the Nigeria Crisis Response Plan (2024-2025) clearly outlines intervention priorities, including providing basic services, responding to health emergencies, and finding solutions to crowded camps.

However, these challenges persist. A January 2025 report by HumAngle uncovered a public health crisis in two IDP camps: Damboa Low-Cost and Muna Kumbari. The report explains that, for over a year, a highly contagious skin disease has spread unchecked, affecting infants, children, and nursing mothers. The two camps house over 14,000 residents, with at least 1,500 households each.

Key findings

IDP camps in the northeast, especially in Borno, are fatigued by overcrowding, poor hygiene, and malnutrition, leading to high morbidity and mortality rates.
The camps face multiple social determinants of poor health, such as poverty, food insecurity, and the mental health challenges arising from displacement.
Damboa Low-Cost and Muna Kumbari camps each house over 7,000 IDPs, violating global standards that recommend adequate living space to prevent overcrowding.
The contagious skin disease has been untreated for over a year; despite IDPs attempting both traditional and modern treatment, there is no solution in sight.
The prolonged duration of this crisis, without intervention from state authorities, points to neglect and poor prioritisation of the camps.

At least 500 individuals, including adults, nursing women, children, and infants, are affected by the disease.

Why it matters

Health crises weaken both the physical and mental resilience of affected individuals. In a post-conflict setting like Borno State, prolonged health emergencies will hinder the social and economic recovery of IDPs. If left unaddressed, the outbreak could spread to host communities, further straining an already overstretched public health system.

The National Policy on Internally Displaced Persons guarantees IDPs access to social services, much like any other person in the country. Therefore, excluding any group of citizens means marginalisation from government service delivery, further making the population vulnerable–a driver of radicalisation—in susceptible communities, such as northeastern Nigeria.

Additionally, overcrowding in the IDP camps provides an enabling environment for communicable and contagious diseases to spread rapidly. According to the International Organisation for Migration, many IDP camps in the northeast exceed 1,000 people per camp, which is above the global standard, and the tendency of running into further humanitarian crises is high.

What should be done?

The state government should immediately mobilise health professionals to the camps for an expedited medical assessment and treatment of the affected IDPs.
In collaboration with humanitarian and health-related NGOs, the government should activate disease surveillance in all IDP camps in the state for rapid detection in health emergencies.
The government should ensure equitable access to healthcare for all internally displaced persons.
The National Policy on Internally Displaced Persons stresses that “attention should be given to contagious and infectious diseases” among IDPs. Policymakers and implementers should translate this into actionable, achievable, and measurable deliverables and assign responsibility to ensure accountability.
Humanitarian, local, and international NGOs should ensure mobilisation of resources to intervene in the two IDP camps and others undergoing similar crises, in a bid to consolidate on the successes achieved over the years in Borno State.

Conclusion

The achievement recorded in the northeast post-conflict peacebuilding initiatives can only grow when underlying vulnerabilities of people in the region are addressed. HumAngle calls on all stakeholders to ensure these issues receive the required attention. Addressing the contagious skin disease problem will not only prevent the state from plunging into a larger public health crisis but also build on the gains of the post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in the region.

References

Acknowledgment

This policy brief was made possible through the dedication of a talented team of professionals, led by Abdussamad Ahmad Yusuf, for their research, analysis, and drafting of this document.