agency had set up an Emergency Operations Centre to provide information and response to humanitarian needs.

He listed challenges of poor funds, inadequate resources to construct toilets, saying the state had trained WASH committees in the cholera affected communities to pass the message of hygiene forward.

While commending UNICEF for intervention, Yaro said that 35 new boreholes had been constructed in selected cholera communities.

He said that rehabilitation of 80 hand pump boreholes and five boreholes had been provided to help in scaling up interventions to meet the sanitation and hygiene needs of the communities.

The programme manager said that the agency had also carried out social mobilisation and awareness by triggering 105 communities on community-led total sanitation for people to end open defecation practice.

Yaro pledged the commitment of the state to pay its counterpart funds for sanitation and hygiene scale-up, noting that this was already being provided partly.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the WASH in Emergency Working Group was established in 2012, when the country experienced serious devastating flood that affected 85milion people from 14 states.

The group has since remained active, especially in the North-East where IDPs exist and have responded immediately on outbreaks.

The group membership cuts across WASH sector players from Institutions, Development Partners, International and Local NGOs, CSOs responding to WASH issues in the North East, with UNICEF as its co-lead. (NAN)