Doctor Hopes To Adopt Rescued Orphan Baby

A doctor taking care of a baby girl orphaned when the ship her family were on capsized in the Mediterranean has said he wants to be her adoptive father.

Nine-month-old Favour arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa after being rescued off the coast of Libya without her father and pregnant mother who are believed to have died in the accident.

The island's only doctor Pietro Bartolo carried her off the rescue boat that brought her to safety.

The boat she was on overturned on Tuesday, tipping its 120 passengers into the water.

Dozens were pulled alive from the water, but many suffered serious burns from fuel that caught alight.

Mr Bartolo found the youngster shivering on the rescue boat and took her back to his clinic where he gave her some milk and dry clothes.

Since then, he says she has charmed him so much that he wants to continue caring for her.

"I've asked to foster her, I want to keep her with me forever," he told Italian media.

"She is a marvellous creature, she hugged me, she didn't shed a tear," he said.

Mr Bartolo has cared for hundreds of undernourished, dehydrated and distressed migrants since the start of the crisis.

He is widely respected, but the care he has shown her has touched the heart of Italy, putting him in every national newspaper and on TV.

As the only doctor on Lampedusa, a tiny island south of Sicily and just north of the Libyan coast, he has had to examine countless bodies of migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean attempting the journey to Europe.

The bodies of five people who died in the latest capsizing have been recovered. Most are thought to have come from Mali and, like Favour, Nigeria.

Mr Bartolo told La Stampa newspaper Favour's survival reminded him of the remarkable recovery of a woman years ago who had been placed in a body bag in Lampedusa before he discovered a weak pulse.

He said holding and playing with the little girl has brought a rare moment of joy to his regularly grim job.

"When they say you get used to it after a bit, I answer that I have never got used to it. And each time I have to open a body bag I am sick to my stomach," he said.

Favour would not be Mr Bartolo's first foster child.

Five years ago he took in a 17-year-old Tunisian boy, La Stampa said.

Favour has been handed over to the authorities who will decide the child's fate.