By Emma Bajardi | Project Manager
Summer is approaching for the fourth time since our medical teams first started their activity aboard the warships of the Italian Navy. So far, 200 doctors, nurses and midwives have been selected, organized in teams and sent to join the crews of the Navy. Hundreds of people are rescued, triaged and assisted every time a Save and Rescue alarm gets aired. Last winter the SAR operations were less than usual, but with the good season we are typically registering a sudden increase in the activity. May is always a month of great challenge out at sea.
The month of May last year was signed by a tragedy in the Mediterranean. Our medical team aboard the Bettica patroller witnessed a wooden boat capsizing, and they were engaged in the rescue operations.
This last May again there was a shipwreck: the same day that the Navy men rescued about 500 people and her mother Hafsa, a 23-year-old Somali woman, 34 migrants perished off the Libyan coast. It was Wednesday, May 24th. On Friday at 7.30 am on the Libra warship of the Italian Navy, life took its small revenge and she was born, Maria Luisa, three kilos of hope. Our midwife Francesca and our pediatrician Maria Luisa assisted the mother and the baby in what seemed to be a regular and quick delivery, instead was followed by post partum complications for the mother. All ended well, thanks to the skills and experience of the personnel, and mother and child could be transferred by eli to a hospital in the mainland.
Every time a mother is saved, every time a baby is born or rescued alive from the waters, us at Fondazione Rava feel proud of our work, and immensely grateful to those who contribute to making our constant engagment possible.
Ahead of us are four months of emergency within the emergency. Hundreds of thousands of desperate people are hoarded someplace in Lybia and are being embarked thousands at a time on rubber or wooden vessels. Our teams will be doubled or even tripled all summer long.
Keep supporting our commintment to mothers and children like Hafsa and Maria Luisa.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
