Athens (AFP) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Five mayors of Athens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 coastal suburbs warned Wednesday of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153enormous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d health risks posed by a nearby camp housing over 4,000 migrants and refugees.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The conditions are out of control and present enormous risks to the public health,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the mayors complained in a letter to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in reference to the camp at Hellinikon, the site of Athens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 old airport.<\/p>\n
A total of 4,153 people, including many families, have been held there for the last month in miserable conditions.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The number of people is much higher than the capacity of the place and there are serious hygiene problems,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d local mayor Dionyssis Hatzidakis told AFP.<\/p>\n
He and his four fellow mayors from the area cited a document from Greece\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disease prevention centre KEELPNO warning of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the danger of disease contagion due to unacceptable housing conditions\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at the site which they say has no more than 40 chemical toilets.<\/p>\n
Since the migrants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 favoured route through the Balkans to the rest of Europe was shut down in February, numbers have been building up in Greece, with 46,000 Syrians and other nationalities now stuck in the country.<\/p>\n
Thousands of these have been transferred from the islands they arrived at to temporary centres such as the one at Hellinikon, until more suitable reception centres can be set up.<\/p>\n
The five mayors also voiced their disquiet at the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tensions and daily violent incidents between the refugees or migrants,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d calling on the interior minister to boost police numbers in the area.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are launching an appeal for help to protect the public health and security of both the refugees and the local population,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they said in their letter.<\/p>\n
Their intervention came the day after 17-year-old Afghan woman living in Hellinikon with her parents died after six days in an Athens hospital.<\/p>\n
Her death was linked to a pre-existing heart condition exacerbated by the difficult journey to Greece, the doctor who treated her was quoted as saying in the Ethnos daily.<\/p>\n
Greek island officials on Tuesday began letting migrants leave detention centres where they have been held, as Human Rights Watch heaped criticism on a wave of EU-sanctioned expulsions to ease the crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Athens (AFP) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Five mayors of Athens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 coastal suburbs warned Wednesday of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153enormous\u00e2\u20ac\u009d health risks posed by a nearby camp housing over 4,000 migrants and refugees. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The conditions are out of control and present enormous risks to the public health,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the mayors complained in a letter to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in reference to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}