The Borno State Government, on Monday, lamented the pollution of the soil and drinking water by decomposing dead bodies and bomb shrapnel and residues of various other warfare materials used in the Boko Haram violent conflict over the last 13 years.
The state also expressed regrets that it lost about 53 per cent of its healthcare workforce to the Boko Haram insurgency.
The Executive Secretary of Borno State Scholarship Board, Bala Isa, who spoke in Maiduguri on Monday, said the health workers were either killed by the terrorists or the war forced them to flee to safe climes within and outside the country.
Isa said the situation had taken a toll on the state’s healthcare system.
Isa spoke while announcing the award of scholarships for the training of the medical personnel to replace the lost ones.
He said the state government urgently packaged the programme of training to handle the situation as it gradually relocates residents displaced by the insurgency to their ancestral communities to rebuild their lives.
He said, “Warfare materials and activities like the decomposition of dead bodies and rusting of bomb shrapnel and other materials used in the Boko Haram violent conflict have polluted the soil and drinking water in the majority of the sacked or deserted communities.
