France: MSF offers temporary shelter for people stuck in dire conditions in Calais

Our teams continue to offer medical and psychosocial assistance to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in transit at this port in northern France. From November to January, as part of our mobile clinics, we treated 338 patients in Calais; 184 of whom were suffering from respiratory illnesses, 81 complaining of pain linked to living conditions; and 48 were treated for injuries caused by the difficult conditions of their journey or by physical trauma.

In the middle of puddles, with their feet in the mud, wrapped in blankets and soaked clothes, with only small campfires for heating, people risk developing illnesses linked to exposure to the cold or complications due to the lack of treatment for infections.

The extreme living conditions, the cold, the insecurity, the repeated and dangerous attempts to cross the Channel by road or sea, the harassment by the police who regularly come to dislodge people from their makeshift camps, destroying their tents and confiscating their meagre personal belongings such as blankets, clothes, and telephones, all add to the fragility of people’s individual situations and their psychological state.

“Once again this winter, the dismantling of camps and forced removal of people from the coast, carried out by the police and authorities, have not prevented dangerous crossings of the Channel to England,” says Michaël Neuman, head of MSF’s activities in France. “Instead, they’ve left hundreds of people even more vulnerable and without a solution.”

“The situation in Calais illustrates the failure of the security responses of France, the United Kingdom and the European Union,” says Neuman. “Solidarity would cost less, if only in human lives.”