Dimitris Papanicolaou, deputy general coordinator of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is one of the people who helped the survivors of the shipwreck, off the coast of Greece, of a boat that would have transported between 500 and 700 people, several hundred of them in the hold, mainly women and children.
The shipwreck occurred overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, 47 nautical miles (87 kilometers) from Pylos, in the Ionian Sea. Since Wednesday, rescue teams have saved 104 people and recovered 78 bodies. The Greek coast guard said none of the migrants on board the fishing boat were equipped with life jackets.
“People are worn out, mentally broken and in a very serious state, because they went hungry. They went five days without eating”, says Papanicolaou in the place.
MSF teams provide “medical and psychological” assistance to migrants arriving at the Malakasa camp, on the outskirts of Athens, and it is the psychological dimension that has the greatest dimension: those who arrive are “very sick and in a worrying state “.
Dimitris Papanicolaou says that the migrants are “destroyed because many people have lost their families and they have no news”, something aggravated by the fact that “many people” still have not been found.
Of the more than 100 survivors, some 70 are in the MSF camp, “all men and eight unaccompanied children.”
This Friday, Unicef expressed “deep sadness and shock” at the information that up to 100 children could be among the migrants who were trapped in the hold of the ship that sank.
Source: TSF
