The nurse on a mission to save Syrian refugees
IT WAS a sight Jacob Goldberg will remember for the rest of his life. A boat bobbingupanddownontheMediterranean,with22deadbodiespiledupinside.
“We received an emergency call out to a rubber boat that had cracked in the middle,” he says. “Water had started flowing in and had mixed with gasoline. It caused the people who were crammed in in their hundreds to panic. Twenty-one of the 22 who died were women. They drowned in just three quarters of a metre of water.”
The 32-year-old nurse is a member of a Médicins Sans Frontières team providing medical treatment to refugees making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya.
Currently based in Catania, in Sicily, he treats refugees arriving at ports around the island. But more often he is called out to help migrants whose boats have got into difficulty at sea.
In such situations, there is no time to be shocked at the dreadful scenes he might witness. “You just have to crack on with it and save who you can,” he says.
Mr Goldberg, from Mill Hill, north London, is part of “a fast response team who go in first on a smaller boat and assess the situation.” He is one of two nurses on the boat, and works alongside a doctor, midwife and translator.
Most of the refugees are from east and west African countries, he says.
“What they have already been through is traumatising. Of course for us, it is impossible not be affected by it, but you are trained for it and the need to help the people alive drives you on.”
But the moment he saw the 22 bodies in the boat tested his professionalism to the utmost.
He explains: “What was most heartbreaking for me was watching one of the men we rescued discover his wife was one of the women who died. He just broke down.”
Mr Goldberg was inspired to take up emergency medicine after volunteering for Magen David Adom, Israel’s ambulance service, in his gap year. He trained as a nurse at City University in London, and worked for MSF in African conflict zones before being sent to Italy.
He spends three weeks at a time at sea, before coming back to port to rest for one or two days before going out again.
He is in no doubt that the refugees would not embark on such a dangerous journey unless they were desperate. He says: “I’ve heard stories from women we have rescued who have been told to put in contraceptive implants in preparation for being raped. These women know they are likely to be raped but they make the journey anyway because they need to get away from situations where it is already happening to them. “We regularly have to treat women who have wounds from being beaten.” He says he has been most moved by the number of unaccompanied minors he has rescued. “I see so many children travelling alone. They have escaped places like Somalia or Eritrea and have no one. “On the last rescue I did, there were two brothers, eight- and 10-years-old. They were severely malnourished. Just being able to give them a warm meal, dry clothes and somewhere safe to sleep really stood out for me.” MSF provide him and his team with counselling if they need it, but it is his relationships with his colleagues that helps him cope. He says :“I love my team. When we get back to port there is a chance to go out for dinner together and let off some steam. But although the job is hard and intense, we are desperate to get back out. “A moment not spent at sea is a moment we can’t help people who need us.”