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The Lampedusa Doctor who exchanged medicine for politics

The numbers of migrants arriving from Northern Africa via the central Mediterranean to Italy this year has plummeted, but many still attempt the perilous journey and simply don’t make it. Aid agencies warn that as many as one in six migrants are now drowning en route.

The hard line Italian government continues to impound NGO search and rescue vessels and ban them from docking in Italian ports.

The Mediterranean island of Lampedusa has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants disembark at its port over the past few years.

For the second part of her series, Emma Jane Kirby has been speaking about the high death toll to the former Lampedusa doctor who is now an MEP in Brussels.

(Photo: Dr Pietro Bartolo, the former Lampedusa doctor, now an MEP
Credit: Getty Images )

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Duration:

7 minutes

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