Italy 2023 © Skye McKee/MSF

Italy

Providing medical and psychological assistance to migrants.

News update

MSF pauses search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean indefinitely

December 13, 2024 — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today that it has ceased operations of its rescue vessel, Geo Barents, which had been operational since June 2021. MSF is suspending all search and rescue efforts until further notice, with the intention of restarting again next year with a new ship. Italian laws and policies have made it impossible to continue with the current operational model. MSF will begin the process of evaluating different operational models to respond to the needs of migrants in this challenging environment.

Our work in Italy

In Italy, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) offers medical and psychological care to migrants, who are often traumatized after their perilous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea and face further challenges on arrival.

What's happening in Italy?

Over the last decade, Italy has become one of the main entry points to Europe for undocumented migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers arriving by sea. Whether departing from Libya and Tunisia, most experience extreme violence, abuse, and ill-treatment along this migration route.

How we're helping in Italy

In northern Italy, between February 2023 and July 2024, MSF provided medical consultations, referrals, and information about other available services to hundreds of people waiting to cross into France, most of whom were living in precarious conditions in unofficial settlements in the city of Ventimiglia in the Liguria region.

We also supported civil society associations in Oulx in the Piedmont region, and Trieste in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, to deliver basic health care to migrants. In the south, another MSF team provided medical and psychological support to migrants upon disembarkation in Roccella Ionica in the Calabria region between June 2022 and September 2024. Due to a considerable reduction in the number of arrivals in this region, we handed these activities over to the Italian Red Cross. In July, an MSF team began conducting medical consultations, referrals for specialized care, and psychological support for migrants in Agrigento, on the island of Sicily, where many people identified as vulnerable are transferred to reception centers after arriving by sea. In Palermo, we maintained our support to the university hospital, delivering comprehensive care to people who experienced torture and intentional violence in Libya during their journeys. The project has a multidisciplinary approach, offering medical, psychological, social, and legal assistance to patients. Once again, there were multiple shipwrecks off the Italian coast during the year. In response, we sent a mobile team to different locations in Sicily and Calabria, where they conducted psychological first aid interventions to assist survivors and the families of the victims. MSF volunteers continued to support migrants, asylum seekers, and marginalized people to access medical services in Palermo, Naples, Rome, Turin, and Udine through dedicated helpdesks.

How we're helping

3,990

Outpatient consultations

1,670

Individual mental health consultations

Victims of torture treated

*Data from MSF International Activity Report 2024

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