ATHENS (AP) – A medical charity working in Greece says it has diagnosed six young children living in a migrant facility on the eastern Aegean island of Samos as suffering from malnutrition, the first time its doctors have made such a diagnosis since the facility opened in 2021.
The Greek section of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said its staff had diagnosed the children, who are aged between six months and six years old with moderate to severe acute malnutrition and in need of immediate medical intervention.
“Children make up about 25 per cent of the (camp’s) population, yet pediatric care remains insufficient, not only within the center but on the entire island of Samos,” MSF Greece’s Director General Christina Psarra said in a news release.
The six children, who hailed from Afghanistan and Syria, all arrived in the camp with their families within the last two to three months, and it was not possible to determine whether they had already been suffering from malnutrition before they arrived, Psarra told The Associated Press. However, “definitely the conditions in the camp have made things more difficult and have had an aggravating effect,” she said.
The situation was exacerbated by the severance nine months ago of a stipend provided to asylum seekers in Greece, which had allowed them to purchase fresh food and other basic necessities, she added. Officially designated as a “closed controlled access center,” the European Union-funded migrant camp in Samos, built on a hillside about eight kilometres from the island’s main port of Vathy, was opened in 2021 to replace a massively overcrowded camp that had developed on the town’s fringes.
