The medical services in the occupied Ceuta are overwhelmed and the medical staff is exhausted due to the migration crisis, President of the Ceuta Official College of Physicians, Enrique Roviralta, warned.
“The services are absolutely overwhelmed. Above all, the collapse can be seen among the staff, they are broken, exhausted. Medical staff is forced to work double shifts and take more duty shifts”, Roviralta told Spanish newspaper ABC in a report published on Monday.
There is now a gastroenteritis outbreak in Ceuta, he said, adding that they even had to open an emergency wing at a hospital which had been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Sunday, EFE news agency reported that around 200 migrants who illegally entered the occupied Ceuta from Morocco staged a protest at the Spanish exclave’s Tarampolin Beach, calling on local authorities to grant them asylum. Law enforcement officers were deployed at the site.
Background: Between 60,000 and more than 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Sebta in late July, in what Spanish officials have called the territory’s largest migration crisis, with most returning to Morocco within hours due to a lack of accommodation and supplies. Spanish authorities said at least 88 people died in the crossings, a figure Moroccan officials have put lower. Spanish and Moroccan authorities have attributed the surge to social media rumors about a Spanish court ruling and to people-smuggling networks, while Spain and Morocco have since agreed to speed up repatriations.