Doctors at the Bambini hospital in Palermo on the Italian island of Sicily declared a six-year-old girl dead on Tuesday (August 19) after she had been hospitalized in serious condition following a Mediterranean crossing with her mother from the African coast to Lampedusa.

The girl, who was originally from Guinea, arrived on the island during the night between August 7 and August 8 after a five-day journey on a six-meter-long boat along with 49 other migrants that had gone adrift in the waves without food or water. The vessel had departed from El Amra in Tunisia.

The girl's condition had immediately appeared serious on arrival in Italy. She was taken by helicopter to Palermo and placed in intensive care.

On Tuesday morning a procedure was set in motion to ascertain whether she was brain dead. Her family members did not agree to donate her organs.

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Mother assisted by MSF and migrant community

Her mother is being assisted by the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity with a psychologist and cultural mediator as well as the head of the Casa di Lucia. The MSF team noted that psychological support for the woman was ongoing and that the migrant community was organising a collective prayer.

"All of this, however," a member of the charity said, "does not remove the absurdity of the fact that people continue to die at sea due to a lack of rescue operations."

The MSF employee added that "over 30,000 people have died at sea [in the Mediterranean since 2014, ed. note]. They seem to be just numbers, but we hear the individual, unforgettable stories of these people, like the mother assisted in the past few hours in Palermo. These are stories with a sense of powerlessness and infinite sadness due to not being able to save their own children."

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