A photo of a new-born baby on a migrant boat headed for Lanzarote was published around the world last month.
The photo was taken by a worker on the Maritime Rescue vessel Talia shortly after it had arrived to intercept an inflatable carrying 60 people on 6th of January – Three Kings Day. The baby girl had been born around 15 minutes before the rescue vessel arrived, and the child and mother were evacuated to the boat before later being taken to hospital by helicopter.
The Talia’s skipper, Domingo Trujillo said that “the baby was crying when we arrived, which indicated to us that it was alive and there were no problems, and we asked the woman’s permission to undress her and clean her.”
Trujillo said he was grateful he didn’t have to cut the umbilical cord, something he has had to do when attending to a previous birth at sea. Following the rescue, an emergency doctor at Lanzarote’s Dr José Molina Orosa Hospital confirmed that mother and daughter were doing well.
The New Year started with a marked increase in the arrival of pateras (migrant boats) to Lanzarote. 13 vessels carrying 822 people were intercepted in the first eight days of the year.
Currently, most migrants are from countries such as Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria. Arrivals are usually handled at the main pier in Arrecife, where most adults will be placed in the temporary reception centre composed of tents at Puerto Naos for a couple of days until their claims are processed.
After that, adults are generally moved to centres on the other islands or mainland Spain, with mothers and dependent children usually held in separate premises. However, the Canarian Government has parental responsibility for unaccompanied underage migrants and the difficulty of accommodating these young people has become an increasingly pressing problem for the regional government.
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