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Severe Malformations in 70 Children Contaminated with Fluoride in Niger
Seventy children in a village in southern Niger are suffering from serious malformations after drinking water with a high fluoride content, state television reported Thursday night, France-Presse reported today.
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Mundo Níger
The children, aged between two and 10, live in the village of Dadin-Kowa, in the Maradi region, and "suffer from malformations of the limbs", which "result from the fact that they drank water from a borehole with excess fluoride", according to the television station.
This borehole was built in Dadin-Kowa by "a humanitarian partner" who "did not involve the competent departments in the construction of this hydraulic structure", according to a television report produced during a visit by the Minister of Health, who went to see the children.
According to the report, of the 70 victims, seven have been "successfully operated on" and 23 others are due to be operated on soon.
For decades, Dadin-Kowa has been affected by severe flooding that has engulfed the village's only well, temporarily depriving its inhabitants of drinking water, according to local sources.
In 2001, Niger was rocked by a similar scandal involving children contaminated with fluoride.
That year, the health centre in Tibiri, another village in the Maradi region, counted 4,918 boys and girls suffering from various malformations caused by excessive levels of fluoride in the water distributed between 1985 and 2000 by the public water management company.
The drama of the "children of Tibiri" was revealed by the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights (ANDDH), which had been alerted by doctors concerned about the growing number of cases of serious malformations in children aged between 15 months and 15 years: bowed legs and backs, large heads and weak bones.
Another survey carried out in 2002, commissioned by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), confirmed "fluoride levels above 3 mg/litre and sometimes even 6.4 mg/litre", well above the World Health Organization standard of 1.5 mg/litre.
The FIDH accused the management of the public company of "hiding this poisoning from the public".
In October 2018, in compliance with a court decision, the Nigerien authorities announced the allocation of two billion CFA francs (three million euros) to compensate the victims of Tibiri.
In Niger, a vast desert state, one in two inhabitants does not have access to drinking water.
In Niamey, the capital, with more than 1.5 million inhabitants, there are entire districts that suffer from water shortages that can last a whole day. In these cases, the inhabitants have to resort to private boreholes to replenish their reserves.
Read also: Women and children abducted in north-western Nigeria have been released (Portuguese version)
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