A six-year-old Syrian girl airlifted to Malta from a sinking boat is fighting for her life at Mater Dei Hospital with serious complications due to severe dehydration and drinking seawater.
Sources close to the hospital said the girl was in a critical condition at the Intensive Therapy Unit and has shown no signs of improvement since she was first admitted to hospital unconscious on Sunday.
The girl was evacuated by the Armed Forces of Malta along with an adult originally believed to be her mother but who turned out to be her aunt.
She was found to be in a “serious state of dehydration” and was “critically ill”, said the Italian coast guard, which coordinated the rescue.
Medical sources said the girl, who Times of Malta is opting not to name for now, drank a lot of seawater during the crossing, causing acute sodium poisoning and severe dehydration. She suffered electrolyte imbalances and several brain thromboses and was still unconscious yesterday.
The girl and her aunt were among 28 asylum seekers in distress who were rescued by a Liberian-flagged merchant ship off the eastern coast of Libya on instructions by the Italian coastguard .
Malta’s armed forces made no mention of Sunday’s operation until Tuesday, when a spokesperson confirmed the evacuation had taken place.
The other 26 people were transferred onto an Italian coast guard patrol boat 80 miles off Syracuse and taken to Pozzallo. The coast guard said the Liberian ship reported no deaths.
However, there were scant details about the rescue operation and how long it took before the migrants were saved.
Six people, including two babies aged one and two years, and a child of 12 died of dehydration on a migrant boat that reached Pozzallo on Monday. The survivors were all in a serious condition.
Another child, four-year-old Syrian girl Loujin Ahmed Nasif, died off Crete after she was rescued with another 60 migrants who had left Lebanon.
Alarm Phone, a group running a hotline for migrants needing rescue, had repeatedly called on the authorities in Malta and Italy to act while a volunteer in Sicily has blamed the Maltese authorities for acting too late.