On a dusty street corner in a grimy port on the outskirts of Athens, a public health crisis that has no precedent in Europe is unfolding.
After five years of unrelenting austerity, doctors working in a charity-run clinic are witnessing daily what they never thought they would see in their entire careers - children and adults suffering from malnutrition.
In Perama, one of the poorest parts of Athens, unemployment has reached 60 per cent and many families do not have enough money to put food on the table.
The town once prospered on the back of building and repairing ships but it has been hammered first by a drastic contraction of the sector and then by the unremitting tax rises, pension cuts and other austerity measures introduced by the government at the behest of its international creditors.
The health clinic was originally set up to provide free health care and medicines to the growing number of poor, but now it hands out emergency boxes of food as well. » | Nick Squires, Perama | Sunday, January 25, 2015
