Aid organization Doctors Without Borders urgently sent two people who are staying at the application center in Ter Apel to hospital on Thursday. It concerns a man who had an acute heart attack and a man with diabetes who had not received insulin for a month.
From Thursday, Doctors Without Borders (AzG) will provide medical and psychological care to asylum seekers outside the gate of the application center in Groningen. “We see a lot of neglected chronic diseases,” said director of MSF Netherlands Judith Sargentini. For example, the man with diabetes had already traveled without insulin for some time before he arrived in Ter Apel. He should have received immediate medical attention there, but that did not happen.
The man who suffered the acute heart attack was treated by an MSF doctor and then sent to hospital. The organization also sees many people with sores on their bodies. “That could very well be scabies. Where people live close together without good hygiene, it arises,” says Sargentini. The Red Cross also expressed concerns on Thursday about the poor facilities outside the application centre. According to the organization, there are only a few toilets.
Some people have been in Ter Apel for a while, some just recently, Sargentini says. “But if you have emigrated and have traveled through the country, you can assume that you need help. These people should get it too. They have diseases that can be treated well, but they have not received any attention.”
Doctors without Borders is busy on the first day in Ter Apel. “Our people look for the most serious cases. But as they try to work through that list, someone else comes forward with an even more pressing problem.” The organization will stay in Ter Apel for four to six weeks, five days a week.
Last nights about seven hundred people slept outside. This is the first time that MSF has provided emergency aid in the Netherlands.