Nigerian woman gives birth on Mediterranean Sea

A Nigerian woman has delivered a baby boy on
board a rescue ship in the Mediterranean after
being plucked from an overcrowded migrant
rubber dinghy.
BBC quoted Medical charity Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) as saying that the baby’s
parents, Otas and Faith Osunbor, had named
him Newman Otas.
They had been making the hazardous crossing
to Italy with their two other children, aged
seven and five, and were rescued just 24 hours
before the baby was born.

An MSF midwife on board the ship MV
Aquarius, Jonquil Nicholl described the birth as
“normal… in dangerously abnormal conditions”.
Mrs Osunbor said she had been “very stressed”
on the rubber boat and had been having
contractions for three days.
Nicholl, who delivered the baby, said: “I am
filled with horror at the thought of what would
have happened if this baby had arrived 24 hours
earlier in that unseaworthy rubber boat, with fuel
on the bottom where the women sit, crammed in
with no space to move, at the mercy of the sea.
“And 48 hours previously they were waiting on a
beach in Libya not knowing what was ahead of
them.”

“Just over an hour ago a baby boy was born on
board the Aquarius. Mum, baby, dad and 2 big
brothers are all well,” she said.
“The gorgeous little guy was born in international
waters; so, his nationality is still under
discussion”, she added.
Ms White told the BBC that such events were
rare on rescue ships, although another baby was
born on the Aquarius in May to a woman from
Cameroon.