Patients can only enter with their police papers, known as their ausweis, which contain their photograph, name and number. This will happen inwardly, harming some of the most vulnerable people in the world. UNHCR head in Greece speaks at emergency site. We know he will not be safe back in Afghanistan. Our clinic runs on the grid, regularly tripping out, and we carry out our consultations by the glow of head torches and battery-operated lights. We do not know where he is and we do not know the details of his rejection. When the gate is unlocked there is a rush of people, each shouting that they are an emergency, waving their ausweis. It works for a few minutes, then fills with blood again. The translators – non-medical but now accustomed to this type of emergency – grab oxygen masks, gauze and cannula dressings, and squeeze in fluid like members of a trained trauma team. BRF doctors from the Netherlands and Belgium – Mirjam Wubs, Lisanne Schreuder Goedheijt with translator Nourullah Ishaqzi, Lucie Blondé, and Mariëtte de Reeper – work in the “green” area. People queue in the dark from 6:30 to try to get help. They have started responding by the time they are in the ambulance, and we know they will be OK. We know about the direct correlation between light and crime – people have been requesting an end to this darkness. Moria is within a former military base surrounded by olive groves. Rose is breastfeeding her baby, born last August while living in the chaos of the Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Geneva Palais briefing note on situation for children affected by fire at Moria camp in Lesvos, and UNICEF response ... Thousands of asylum seekers on the Greek island of Lesvos fled for their lives as a huge fire ripped through the camp of Moria, the country's largest migrant facility. What happens to your body in extreme heat? Child migrants sleep in pens at Lesbos port, Tear gas fired as migrants hold protest on Lesbos, Greek islanders strike over crowded migrant camps. The Blue Star Chios ferry, which has capacity to house 1,000 people, has docked at the Lesbos port of Sigri. Over 12,000 men, women and children ran in panic out of containers and tents and into adjoining olive groves and fields as the fire destroyed most of the overcrowded, squalid camp. UNHCR has extensive video coverage of the situation on Lesvos available at Refugees Media, including these recent videos. Talks are ongoing with other states to take part, Mr Seehofer said. More than 4 years ago Pope Francis visited Moria camp. I have not done a special job here. After a fire destroyed that camp, the two women were repatriated to the Kara Tepe camp, along with more than 6,000 other people. As far as I’m aware, all of these patients are still alive. Other countries expected to take in children include Switzerland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Portugal, according to German reports. There has been no electricity in the camp now for two and a half months. With only two ambulances on the island despite a rapid 25% increase in the population, the service is not fit for purpose, and we are increasingly using taxis to transport patients to hospital. They are understaffed. Those people in the camps really want freedom and they … Photograph: Tessa Kraan/BRF, A doctor’s story: inside the ‘living hell’ of Moria refugee camp, n the Greek island of Lesbos is the Moria refugee camp, constructed for 3,100 people but now with a population of more than 20,000 men, women and children. We make up the clinic team, and respond together as the crowds enter. During my time there, one of our most calm, loyal, and impressive translators was arrested after a second rejection and deported without papers, and without a lawyer. Kyaw Zwar Minn spends the night in his car after saying the military attaché "occupied" the embassy. They strongly oppose plans to rebuild a temporary camp. This child is persistently hot and lethargic, and has a concerning rash. There is also strong resistance from locals for a new camp to house … The fire at Moria was "a sharp reminder to all of us for what we need to change in Europe", the interior minister said. The support crew member on the back door shouts “red patient” and I move the febrile child into the back space of the cabin, pulling the bed out and making space for the emergency. Women and minors largely choose to wear nappies to avoid having to leave their tents after the sun goes down. It has not come. Refugees speak of dreadful reality inside Lesvos' Moria camp. An entire family is dragged in, two of the four children unconscious and the father appearing confused, shouting about “fire”. How do you weigh up the risks of the AZ vaccine? Families have been sleeping in fields and on roads after fleeing the blaze on Wednesday, as authorities struggle to find accommodation for them. Eight of the 35 who tested positive for Covid-19 are since believed to have been found and isolated. A mother comes in with her four-year-old child who has a very high fever, and who hasn’t been eating, drinking or responding to her properly for hours. Moria refugee camp is at breaking point; the situation is about to implode. "We've faced this situation for five years, it's time for others to bear this burden.". Some 20 firefighters battled the blaze at the Moria camp - designed for fewer than 3,000 people - as migrants, many suffering from smoke exposure, fled. The sections for unaccompanied minors and vulnerable women consist of fenced areas with sleeping cabins inside, locked in a secure area near to the police and new arrivals areas. As the sun goes down, I always feel the atmosphere at triage and inside the clinic changes. People from 70 countries had been sheltered there, most from Afghanistan. Almost 13,000 people had been living in squalor in the overcrowded Moria camp and are desperate to leave the island. A month ago, on September 12, the Greek government opened a new migrant camp on Lesbos, after Moria was destroyed by fire. We start oxygen from our transported cylinders on the children who are not responding, wrap them in emergency blankets, and call the ambulance, while checking over the others. I have no solution, but I want to give a voice to these silenced people, and hope there is a willing audience prepared to begin to listen. It is basic but functional. All 400 children have now been flown to the Greek mainland. eople queue outside the wire-fenced cabin for hours before the clinic opens at four, hoping to be able to speak to a doctor about their child’s rash, their pregnancy-related abdominal pains, their hallucinations and flashbacks from witnessed violence, their sleep disturbance, their itch from having to wear nappies at night for fear of having to go to the toilet in the pitch-black camp. An urgent effort to help thousands of homeless asylum-seekers on Lesvos. We now have only one oxygen tank as we used the other on the children with carbon monoxide poisoning. EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Wednesday that the EU had agreed to finance the transfer of the minors to the mainland and their accommodation. By Bethany Bell, BBC News, Lesbos. "The shameful situation in the camp and the fire disaster are the direct result of a failed European refugee policy - now the EU must finally help the people affected," the open letter reads. Video, Covid-19: The disinformation tactics used by China, 'I can't change my gender unless I'm sterilised' Video, 'I can't change my gender unless I'm sterilised', 'Strong' evidence found for a new force of nature, Kardashian tries to get photo wiped off the web, PM 'deeply concerned' about Belfast violence, Beijing now has more billionaires than any city, Hong Kong citizens given 'support' to come to UK, Fleeing Lesbos fire: 'Daddy, are we going to die? December 14. 7K … 0:41. We see the next patients. Sanitary conditions are grim. On the Greek island of Lesbos is the Moria refugee camp, constructed for 3,100 people but now with a population of more than 20,000 men, women and children. Has Greece become more hostile to migrants? Now a thunderstorm with very heavy winds and rain. I start the tests on him. One person carried a large piece of cardboard emblazoned with the message: "We don't want food, we want freedom." Italy and Greece have accused wealthier northern countries of failing to do more, while a number of central and eastern nations are openly resistant to the idea of taking in a quota of migrants. I continue, with the help of my translator, to see patients in the “yellow” queue, mostly children with fevers, adults with abdominal pain, pregnant women, minors with scabies. I go back to debrief the team; the translators are already cleaning the blood from the floor, beds and walls. A boy plays with a scooter in front of rubbish bags in area outside camp Moria. Axel Steier, co-founder of Mission Lifeline, said he had warned that the situation would "escalate" over the camp's poor conditions. Most of them have made a treacherous journey to come to this unsafe place; 40% of them are children. This is daily. After a week in which riot squads clashed with crowds of migrants, one medic gives a harrowing account of life volunteering in Greece’s infamous holding facility, Children in the olive grove area. As the ambulance arrives, we beg them to come down to the clinic gates to minimise the time transferring the boys in the freezing cold. Are pay-by-the-minute booths the future of work? The charity sent staff to Lesbos, together with the Greek Council of Refugees, to assess the situation at the provisional site after a fire gutted the island’s Moria camp in September. Their resilience and care for their fellow refugees nearly chokes me. He has heard that another child from a nearby tent is now in hospital in Athens with a brain infection. The Moria refugee camp is the largest refugee camp in Greece located on the island of Lesbos. his is not abnormal. Two naval vessels have also been provided. We had gone through some team pre-hospital trauma care earlier in the week and have had daily exposure to stabbings by now, so we get to work putting in lines and assessing each patient. The men have been running with him unconscious in the blanket for 10 minutes to reach the medical area. A tense situation. In the acute phase we provide emergency care for these patients and their friends, relatives and tent-mates, who listen to them cry at night, and drag them to the clinic in blankets when they have attacks. At the scene. Thousands of asylum seekers on the Greek island of Lesvos fled for their lives as a huge fire ripped through the camp of Moria, the country’s largest migrant facility. Guardians work hard to keep the most vulnerable safe, but with boredom and violence still prevalent, and staff often not speaking the same language as the refugees, monitoring and care is stretched, and problems continue to spiral. Moria is the largest of five centres on Greece’s Aegean islands and has become a symbol of Europe’s response to the arrival of asylum seekers and migrants on boats from nearby Turkey. In terms of mental health help for refugees, there are currently two referral pathways for the more severe end of the spectrum, but each takes time and depends on exposure to violence, sexual violence, and previous history. On Friday, migrants and refugees approached police barriers blocking the road out of Moria camp, holding signs calling for "freedom" and opposing the construction of a new camp. “The situation in Moria cannot continue because it is a matter of public health, humanity and national security at the same time,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement. The Moria camp is a 10-minute drive from the port of Mitilini, the largest city on Lesbos. And the next day, and the next. We put in an emergency needle to decompress the damaged lung. We are fortunate to have a psychiatric nurse in our team, and once any more sinister pathology is excluded, we move the man to a back room to rest and be reviewed by her, to plan onward referral and care. Eight women live in one of 18 small basic rooms under a large tent, nicknamed "the women's camp." Here are their stories. We carry crash bags and emergency drugs to the clinic every day in rucksacks and have them in A1 – the emergency care room – where any “red” patients are taken for emergencies that day. “Green” patients need urgent care; “yellow” patients are severely unwell with abnormal vital signs and require a full examination on a bed; “red” emergency patients usually suffer from major panic attacks, extreme pain, collapses and, increasingly, life-threatening stab wounds or the results of other violence. Initially built for 2,200 people, the camp has hosted almost ten times the amount of people it … The suffering is palpable, the hopelessness is insidious, the feeling of abandonment is all-consuming. The Moria camp packed thousands of people into a space the size of a Walmart, forcing many to live in squalor and leaving the camp severely vulnerable to COVID-19. Any chronic problems are advised to come back to doctors working in the daytime: this clinic is for acute care only, for emergencies only. Images of Moria refugee camp taken in July 2017 and January 2020 illustrate the population explosion. On the last night I was working we saw four life-threatening stabbings, including a stabbed neck and an open chest. The boredom in the camp is maddening and the asylum process is opaque. He has also said that the Commission's proposals for a new pact on migration and asylum, due to be presented on 30 September, will "put an end to this unacceptable situation". I am the narrator of the stories of the people still there; this is not about me. Moria Corona Awareness Team. Many local Greeks too want the migrants to leave the island. InfoMigrants went to meet some of them last week. Meanwhile the Moria camp has all the needed ingredients for an outbreak: feeble hygiene, people with poor nutrition and compromised immune systems shoehorned into tight spaces, and a virus that behaves uncontrollably making its way around the world. I am a doctor from London and I have just spent three weeks working for the Boat Refugee Foundation (BRF). There has been no reliable electricity in the camp for more than two-and-a-half months now (with 20,000 people trying to use a grid made for 3,000, it constantly trips and cannot be relied upon for any period of time), and the threat of violence and sexual violence is incredibly high. But officials have also increased security on the island. But the new camp is rightly dubbed ‘Moria 2.0’. The implosion will probably cause a tiny ripple of outward explosion, and then be forgotten. This is daily. Hell on earth — Greece's Moria refugee camp and its tortured history Life threatening. The majority of doctors are not used to dealing with acute stabbings: BRF has not actively recruited for emergency doctors previously, as we were offering more clinic-based urgent care. There's little running water, and washing is difficult. They are triaged at the door by one medic alongside a translator in Farsi and Arabic. New footage from Lesvos emergency site and Moria camp. The Moria camp has a capacity of 3,000 but is now overcrowded with over 20,000 people living there. In Moria, this is not the case. As more and more countries are going into quarantine to slow down the spread of the coronavirus, there is one place on the planet where the situation could well become even more catastrophic than in the rest of the world: the Moria refugees camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, off the Turkish coast. The world continues to turn its back. On a car park outside a supermarket on Thursday, hundreds of migrants, including families with small children, waited for bottled water and food to be distributed. But a group of charities and NGOs have written to the German government saying more has to be done for all of the migrants, not just those minors. Further fires left the camp almost completely destroyed. People from 70 countries had been sheltered there, most from Afghanistan. But the Greek army has already begun setting up replacement accommodation. In this article, we provide a firsthand account of our experiences volunteering as doctors at this very same camp earlier in the year. The island's residents also oppose the reconstruction of the camp and have blocked roads to stop aid deliveries. Moria camp on Lesbos has been criticized many times, for instance, a year ago when MSF psychiatrist Alessandro Barberio sent an open letter in 2018 alarming the emergency situation of the camp. And when we send them back to their tents, I feel ashamed. The Moria camp was initially designed to house 3,000 migrants. Myanmar ambassador to UK 'locked out' of embassy. Even those of us with contacts in other NGOs and with lawyers cannot work it out. Without BRF, I know many would have died every day in the three short weeks I was there: adults – both men and women – from violent stabbings that are stabilised by medics trained briefly in “stop the bleed”; children from a new outbreak of meningitis whose fevers spike at night in their tents; vulnerable women in labour; four-day-old babies sleeping in freezing tents. Covid-19: The disinformation tactics used by China. This time two young men from the sections for unaccompanied minors are dragged in between friends, gasping and covered in blood. The next day we had a 16-year-old boy, again from the supposedly protected sections, fall through the back doors of the clinic with a knife still in his back. We assessed and stabilised them all and got them to hospital. India ignores Covid surge to hold IPL cricket tournament, Covid-19: The disinformation tactics used by China. By that time the situation was already degrading and inhuman, urging him to call for immediate action: “A broader international consensus and an assistance programme are urgently needed to uphold the rule of law, to defend human rights in this unsustainable situation, to protect minorities, combat human trafficking, to eliminate … After visiting the area on Thursday, European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas announced that the devastated camp would be replaced by a modern facility at the same location. It has become a place of violence, deprivation, suffering and despair. I have gone to volunteer, as many have before me and many continue to do while I return to my home, where I have central heating, regular food I can choose, and my freedom – and all of these afforded to me only by my luck at birth. © 2021 BBC. He is a young man in his teens, unconscious, dragged in a dark grey blanket by four people from the surrounding tents. They come with the infamous “Moria flu” and a whole range of chronic problems one would normally expect in a population of this size. Fires broke out in more than three places overnight on Tuesday, according to local fire chief Konstantinos Theofilopoulos. Moria refugee camp is at breaking point; the situation is about to implode. We decide to decompress that side of his chest with a cut to his chest wall. Apparently they went to a neighbour’s tent where a fire was lit for warmth after sundown, and have been exposed to carbon monoxide for a sustained period of time. Some of those infected with the virus had reportedly refused to move into isolation with their families. Just as I start examining the child, I can hear shouting and the sound of someone being dragged along the gravel outside. It has become a place of violence, deprivation, suffering and despair. Despite seeing multiple patients suffering with panic attacks every day, the sound of the screams still shocks and chills me as I wonder: what have you seen? It is… Authorities placed the facility under quarantine last week after a Somali migrant was confirmed to have contracted coronavirus. Another banner read: "Moria kills all lives". “ The EU and Greek response following the Moria fire has been pitiful. Migrants from the burnt-out Moria camp are staging a protest in front of the police barriers which prevent them from moving to other parts of the island. Considering the outright violation of human rights and the grave medical and psychiatric needs we face every day, it is clear that Moria camp is in a state of emergency. Meanwhile, some migrants told BBC Persian that the fire had broken out after scuffles between migrants and Greek forces at the camp. I get a sense of desperation and hostility, not usually played out, but always at the back of my mind. We have boxes with the essentials for consultations – oxygen saturation probes, blood pressure cuffs, thermometers and ophthalmoscopes. There has been no reliable electricity in the camp for more than two-and-a-half months now (with 20,000 people trying to use a grid made for 3,000, it constantly trips and cannot be relied upon for any period of time), and the threat of violence and sexual violence is incredibly high. The Netherlands has already pledged to accept 50 and Finland will take 11. I call all five doctors and the emergency nurse to the cabin and we split into teams, with two translators at each bedside. The hubbub created by another “red” patient draws close and echoes around outside the clinic. Refugees and migrants in the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos March 2020. "We've faced this situation for five years, it's time for others to bear this burden."