Updated 6.40pm - Added Dr Farrugia comments
Independent MP Marlene Farrugia is on the Greek island of Lesbos to carry out voluntary work in a refugee camp that was burned to the ground barely two weeks ago.
Dr Farrugia attends to a young patient. Photo: Marlene Farrugia/FacebookDr Farrugia, a dentist by profession, wrote on Facebook that she would be working with a Dutch surgeon and two dental assistants from Palestine during her time at Moria refugee camp.
"Just arrived at the volunteers' residence. It seems like we will first be treating unaccompanied children," Dr Farrugia posted this morning, saying she had arrived on Lesbos at the crack of dawn. "We'll see what tools we have available."
She later posted a photo of her treating a young patient, adding that there were patients from Iraq, Syria, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Congo, Senegal and Afghanistan at the camp.
Dr Farrugia is volunteering with the Boat Refugee Foundation, and she will remain in the Lesbos camp for the next two weeks. She told Times of Malta that she had been thrust in the thick of things pretty much immediately.
"The camp doesn't always have dentists available, so work tends to pile up. I must have seen something between 40 and 50 patients today, with around 30 of them being children," she said.
With limited equipment at her disposal - Dr Farrugia must make do without a dental chair and is as yet unable to perform dental fillings, since she is waiting on a drill - the MP must be resourceful if she is to help her asylum seeking patients.
More than 60 per cent of Moria refugee camp was destroyed in a large fire on September 19. Some 5,700 refugees and migrants are on Lesbos, stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims are processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.
