A Nigerian woman has given birth to a boy on board a rescue ship in the Mediterranean after being plucked from an overcrowded rubber dinghy.
A midwife on board the ship MV
Aquarius described the birth as “normal… in dangerously abnormal conditions”.
MSF said that the baby’s parents,
Otas and Faith Oqunbor, had named him Newman Otas. They had been making the
perilous crossing with their two other children, aged seven and five, and were
rescued just 24 hours before the baby was born.
“The gorgeous little guy was born in
international waters so his nationality is still under discussion.”
Mrs Oqunbor said she had been “very
stressed” on the rubber boat and had been having contractions for three days.
MSF midwife Jonquil Nicholl, who
delivered the baby, said: “I am filled with horror at the thought of what would
have happened if this baby had arrived 24 hours earlier – in that unseaworthy
rubber boat, with fuel on the bottom where the women sit, crammed in with no
space to move, at the mercy of the sea.
