ATHENS: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, which has been criticized by rights groups for dangerous living conditions.
\nMSF doctors have diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition needing immediate help, it said.
\nWhile it could not say if their malnutrition was due to living in the camp, conditions there \u2014 including insufficient food and medical care \u2014 endangered their health, MSF said.
\n\u201cNo child should suffer from malnutrition due to systemic neglect,\u201d said Christina Psarra, director general of MSF Greece, calling for immediate action and adding that about a quarter of the camp\u2019s residents were children.
\nThe Greek migration ministry said the cases were isolated.
\n\u201cUnder no circumstances is there generalized malnutrition due to living conditions,\u201d the ministry said, adding that asylum-seekers were provided with three meals a day.
\nOn the forefront of Europe\u2019s 2015-16 migration crisis, Greece saw a surge in arrivals in 2024, according to UN data. This year, nearly a third of arrivals to southern Europe from the Middle East and Africa were to Greece.
\nThe EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021 to replace the former camp of Vathy \u2014 once an overcrowded, rat-infested tent city of 7,000 people.
\nThe six malnourished children arrived this year, MSF said.
\nRights group Amnesty International has called conditions at Samos \u201cinhumane and degrading\u201d during periods of overcrowding, with water shortages and a lack of other basic services.
\nIn December, a UN human rights expert accused Greece of failing to identify victims of sex trafficking in the camp.
\nMSF called on Greece and the EU to ensure adequate pediatric care and nutritional support in Samos and to restore financial support to asylum seekers suspended last June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATHENS: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, which has been criticized by rights groups for dangerous living conditions. MSF doctors have diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79299,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79283\/revisions\/79299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}