I’ve visited the wretched refugee camps in Darfur and I’ve walked around post-earthquake Haiti. But in all my years of working in aid and development, I’ve never been as shocked as the day I met a group of 10-year-old Syrian boys, riddled with scabies, huddled together in a rain-sodden ditch under scraps of tarpaulin, writes Leigh Daynes, of health charity Doctors of the World UK, in The Guardian.
Alone and afraid, these boys, all orphans, weren’t in Lebanon or Jordan but in a remote field 20 minutes’ drive from Calais, close to a service station where lorries stop.
Right now, migrants in Calais continue to live in diabolical conditions, suffering awful health problems as a result. These include serious skin problems, gangrene, breathing difficulties and severe cases of diarrhoea.
Increasingly we, the charity Doctors of the World, treat patients who have shattered bones after falling from trucks, who have been slashed by razor wire climbing fences or have been beaten up.
With needs ever increasing, we’ve launched an emergency response in Calais, just as we would in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Our doctors and nurses, working in mobile clinics, provide essential medical consultations but also psychological support for the many migrants traumatised by their experiences.
The question begged by all this is why, while governments on all sides dither, are charities being forced to play this role in one of the richest corners of western Europe?