Order of Malta launches new mission

(ANSA) - Rome, February 12 - The Sovereign Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Catholic church, announced Friday that it has launched a new humanitarian mission to assist and rescue refugees in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey.
    Since December 15, its Italian Relief Corps (CISOM) has already rescued 529 people, including 59 children, in the Aegean search and rescue operation.
    The Order said the mission is "operative 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with medical teams composed of doctors and nurses".
    The operation is taking place aboard a responder vessel of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), a Malta-based NGO dedicated to rescuing refugees and migrants at sea, the majority of whom come from Syria. That vessel carries two rescue boats named Aylan and Galip Kurdi, in memory of the two Syrian brothers aged 3 and 5 whose bodies washed up on the shores of a Turkish beach last September in their attempt to reach European shores with their family.
    In light of the new Aegean operation, the Order of Malta also announced a new campaign called "And Free Them From the Sea" to raise public awareness of the plight of migrant men, women, and children at sea, as well as to raise funds for the CISOM rescue mission.
    Since 2008, CISOM has provided timely and efficient medical assistance at sea in the Strait of Sicily aboard vessels of the Italian Coast Guard, Finance Police and Navy.
    In those seven years, the doctors and nurses of the medical teams have developed specific abilities in healthcare assistance at sea, becoming specialists in the field.
    This has allowed CISOM to assist more than 42,000 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea.
    CISOM Director Mauro Casinghini said his organisation hopes the new patrols announced by NATO to fight human trafficking in the Aegean "will work, and will reduce the arrival, but above all the deaths, in the Aegean".
    Casinghini spoke on Friday about the new CISOM mission to members of the press gathered at the Rome Foreign Press Association for a presentation titled "The Endless Massacre of Migrants in the Aegean".
    He was hopeful regarding the agreement to cease hostilities in Syria within a week, reached late Thursday in a meeting between world leaders in Munich.
    "We've seen the images of a Syria devastated by bombings, and we hold in our eyes the images of the desperation of Syrians who come to Europe because of war," Casinghini said.
    "We hope that (the agreement) is real and that it will allow Syrians to be able to remain in Syria".
    Meanwhile, the Grand Priory of the Order of Malta has assisted more than 150,000 people in poverty in its work across Rome and throughout the regions of Lazio, Tuscany, Umbria and the Marche.
    The Order provides medical assistance as well as overnight shelter to those in need.
    Priory volunteers, together with specialised teams of psychiatrists and psychotherapists, also served around 170,000 hot meals in 2014.
    Grand Prior of Rome Giacomo Dalla Torre said volunteering "isn't doing things in your free time, but donating real time to those in need".
    "We don't ask those who knock on our door where they come from or what faith they profess. For us they are all brothers and sisters," Dalla Torre said.
    Volunteers have cumulatively assisted 10,000 elderly, performed more than 1,000 social service interventions, 2,500 works of charity and 350 medical exams.
    They have also distributed nearly two million kilograms of food, and allocated 350,000 euros in donations to those in need.