A centre-left MP on Tuesday called
on the interior and health ministers to explain why a
29-year-old Gambian migrant died of a heart attack while being
held in a migrant reception center just three days after he
landed on Italy's shores.
The young man reached the coast of Sicily on April 11.
He was transferred to a migrant holding center near the
city of Siracusa in spite of the fact that he was clearly
experiencing some form of medical distress, including blurred
vision, according to International Organization for Migration
(OIM) staff members who were present on the docks when he landed
and who had urged government personnel to hospitalize him.
He finally saw a doctor three days later, when he was taken
to an emergency clinic within the holding center while already
in full cardiac arrest.
He died Monday.
"We want to know why he was not taken to hospital where he
might have received potentially life-saving treatment," said
Khalid Chaouki of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), and who
filed the motion with fellow MPs.
"This incident shows that reception facilities are often
incapable of recognizing the primary needs of migrants. We need
to rethink them," added the Moroccan-Italian MP, an outspoken
defender of immigrants' rights who just before Christmas last
year barricaded himself for days inside a migrant holding center
on the island of Lampedusa to protest conditions there.
Local prosecutors have launched an investigation into the
young man's death, Corriere del Mezzogiorno newspaper reported.
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