The Greek government has been urged to order the immediate evacuation of sick children from a refugee camp
Médecins Sans Frontières has accused Athens of deliberately depriving at least 140 minors housed in the Moria camp of adequate medical care for chronic, complex, and life-threatening diseases and said it was critical that the children be moved to the mainland or transported to other EU member states.
According to the organisation’s medical coordinator, the children are forced to live in tents, in unhygienic conditions, with no access to the specialised medical care and the medication they require after Greece’s centre-right administration withdrew access to the public health system for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants within weeks of its election last year. Médecins Sans Frontières claim the move left more than 55,000 people without proper medical care.
Conditions in the refugee camps have been described as inhumane. There are now more than 42,000 asylum seekers on the Aegean island outposts of Lesbos, Samos and Chios where camps were originally set up to accommodate 5,400 people.
Greece’s migration minister, Notis Mitarachi, has claimed decongestion of the Aegean outposts is a priority, but relocating migrants to the mainland has proven to be difficult as transfers cannot keep up with the pace of new arrivals. Government officials say the problem can only be resolved if asylum seekers are dispersed equitably among all EU member states.
