As of today, Doctors Without Borders (AzG) has a team in Ter Apel that provides medical and psychological care to asylum seekers outside the gate of the application centre. It is the first time that the international aid organization deploys a team in the Netherlands.
The team consists of four to six people who provide basic health care. They treat wounds, infections and skin diseases, dispense prescriptions and provide psychological first aid to adults and children.
On Friday, MSF employees were already in Ter Apel to examine the situation there. According to the aid organization, what they found was comparable to the living conditions in the infamous Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. There were no showers and toilets were not clean.
“Doctors without Borders have been around for fifty years, but it is the first time that we will offer emergency aid in the Netherlands and we are doing this because the Dutch government is failing so late,” says Judith Sargentini, director for MSF Netherlands. “The conditions in which the people at Ter Apel find themselves are inhumane.”
“This is really a short-term solution. It is important that a long-term solution is looked at. And it is important that implementation bodies such as the COA are listened to, because they raised this crisis years ago.”
MSF Netherlands describes it as unprecedented that the aid organization in the Netherlands has to take action. What is your opinion?