Alongside Doctors Without Borders in the Mediterranean

They're coming from everywhere. Afganistan refugees even made it Greece this week.

At Der Spiegel, "Mediterranean Desperation: Saving Lives at the World's Most Dangerous Border":

Doctors Without Borders is the only major humanitarian organization actively rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean. So far, it has saved more than 10,000 people. But in the world's biggest crisis region, timing is everything.

The call comes in at 10:15 a.m. on the fourth day at sea, just as the ship's captain says it looks like it'll be a quiet day. A refugee boat has been spotted at 33 degrees 05 minutes north latitude and 12 degrees 27 minutes east longitude, 17 nautical miles off the coast of Sabratha, Libya. It could be a rubber dinghy, with space for around 100 people. Or it might be a wooden boat, with up to 800 people on board. The captain hits the throttle, pushing the MY Phoenix to full speed.

It's the law of the sea: With every passing hour, the children on board the refugee boat get weaker, more women faint, the men below decks inhale more toxic gasoline fumes, the inflatable dinghies lose air and the wooden boats take on more water. Every hour increases the danger of the boats springing a leak or simply sinking.
And the rescue workers won't reach the troubled vessel for another three hours.

On board the MY Phoenix, preparations begin. There's Regina Catrambone, an Italian woman who founded the "Migrant Offshore Aid Station," or MOAS for short. There's also the emergency relief coordinator Will Turner from Great Britain and the American nurse Mary Jo Frawley, both of whom work for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders. These three people are the heart of the mission, but of course they are not alone. With them are a captain from Spain, a drone pilot from Austria and a rescue specialist from Malta. Altogether, there are 18 of them, patrollingg the waters between Sicily, Malta and Libya -- an area almost the size of Germany. They wait, sometimes for a call from Rome, other times for a dot to appear on the horizon.

The 40-meter-long MY Phoenix was a fishing trawler before it was retro-fitted as a research vessel. Now, in its third life, it sails on behalf of humanity with one simple goal: to save lives where no one else does. It is a floating refugee camp, equipped with an infirmary full of pain medication alongside drugs to combat seasickness and scabies. It also has an ample supply of baby food and oxygen, a cooler with vaccines and 50 body bags in two sizes: one for adults and one for children.

The Mediterranean has become a crisis region, one where more than 2,000 people have died this year already -- more than have lost their lives in attacks in Afghanistan. But of course that figure is misleading. It reflects only the number of recorded deaths. Who knows how many people have drowned without a trace?

Nevertheless, no aid agencies are active in the region. They all wait on shore for the survivors to arrive. The business of saving lives is left to those who are the least prepared: navies and merchant vessels. Meanwhile, more and more refugees are embarking on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean -- 188,000 so far this year.

It's hard to believe that a crisis area of this magnitude is empty of aid workers -- unthinkable, Doctors Without Borders thought, or, as their founders call them, Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF. It is the biggest, best organized medical relief organization in the world. An army of survival. They are professionals for natural catastrophes and civil wars, and they are engaged in the fight against HIV, Ebola and measles. With a budget of €1.066 billion ($1.16 billion) in 2014, MSF's 2,769 international employees and 31,000 local helpers undertook some 8.3 million treatments...

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