Belgium sends B-Fast emergency help team to Nigeria

The federal government has sent two experts from the B-Fast emergency help response team to Nigeria, to determine how to help the families of the 223 girls abducted by the armed Islamist group Boko Haram last month.

“The team has the full backing of the Nigerian government,” federal minister of foreign affairs Didier Reynders and federal public health minister Laurette Onkelinx said in a joint statement.

B-Fast disaster management head Geert Gijs (pictured) explained that the team “will be looking to see whether it would be helpful to send a team of aid workers to provide medical and psychological support to the families or to the girls themselves if they are found”.

B-Fast (Belgian First Aid and Support Team) was set up by the foreign affairs, defence and public health ministries in 2003 as an international rapid response unit for natural disasters and other emergency situations. Gijs headed last year’s B-Fast mission to the Philippines after typhoon Haiyan struck in November. The team has also taken part in missions concerning flooding in Bulgaria, an earthquake in Turkey and a cholera epidemic in Haiti.

If further action is taken in Nigeria, it would be an anomaly in the team’s record. According to the regulations, B-fast intervention is ruled out if there is armed conflict in the area affected, and if B-Fast operations “solely include immediate emergency relief”. Nigeria is also on the very edge of the team’s 6,000 km radius of operations, and those operations are restricted in time to 10 days, a that would hardly seem long enough to carry out psychological counselling for hundreds of victims and their relatives.

“Everyone wants to help,” Gijs told Het Nieuwsblad from Nigeria. “The Chinese have offered to analyse satellite images. Our strength lies in medical and psychological aid. We want to focus on the victims. The Nigerian government will determine whether we have anything to offer.”

The experts will make an evaluation of the situation together with the Nigerians on Friday.

photo by Francis R Malasig/epa/Corbis