Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, raising fresh concerns over the facility’s living conditions.
The medical charity said in a statement Monday, its medical team had diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months to six years with severe or moderate acute malnutrition -a life-threatening condition that, according to MSF, requires immediate intervention to prevent further deterioration. This is the first time the charity has identified malnutrition in the facility since it began working there in 2021.
While MSF could not confirm whether malnutrition was present directly due to the living conditions in the camp, it warned that insufficient food and healthcare placed children at serious risk.
“No child should suffer from malnutrition due to systemic neglect,” Christina Psarra, director general of MSF Greece said, while calling for immediate action. Psarra noted to Reuters that about a quarter of the camp’s residents were children.
The Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum dismissed the claims and said the cases were isolated.
“Under no circumstances is there generalized malnutrition due to living conditions,” adding that the general feeding program is fully implemented.
The Samos camp was built with European Union funding and opened in 2021. It is a closed control access center (CCAC), encircled by barbed wire. It replaced the overcrowded Vathy camp, which once housed 7,000 people in squalid conditions. MSF says that paediatric care remains inadequate, both at the high-security camp and across the Samos island.
Our medical team has reported 6 cases of malnutrition among children at a centre housing asylum seekers on Greece’s Samos island. This is the first time we’ve seen malnutrition at the centre since we began working there in 2021.https://t.co/uDKk9G62VK
— MSF International (@MSF) April 7, 2025
The migrant camp on Samos has been long criticized by charities and human rights organizations as a dangerous, prison-like facility -the first closed access facility for asylum seekers that opened in Greece and which is off-limits even to journalists.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, during a visit when it first opened in September 2021, described it as a modern facility for the temporary accommodation of asylum seekers.
“It is a modern facility, a secure facility, a facility with controlled entry and exit, a facility whose purpose is to temporarily accommodate refugees and migrants who arrive on Samos until it has been decided whether they should be granted protection status,” he said.
The Greek leader then added: “That is, whether they are to be given asylum or, in case that they do not get asylum, have to be returned under international agreements to their countries of origin or to Turkey. This is stipulated by the joint EU-Turkey declaration of 2016.”
Mitsotakis was responding to criticisms leveled against the new facility by Greek and international organizations.
“For us it’s a jail,” Giorgos Karagiannis, head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said of the new camp. “It’s a declaration of harmful policies that are preferred by EU leaders rather than the care, the induction and ensured asylum,” he told Reuters.
The new center is located in a remote location and there “is no doubt that this new center will only further dehumanize and marginalize people seeking protection in the European Union,” the MSF said in a statement.
