Baby delivered by MSF midwife after Nigerian parents and two brothers were rescued from overcrowded rubber dinghy in the Mediterranean

A baby has been born onboard a rescue ship in the Mediterranean after his parents and siblings were rescued from an overcrowded rubber dinghy.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said the healthy baby boy was born on Monday morning onboard MV Aquarius, a search and rescue vessel run in partnership by MSF and SOS Méditerranée. He was born in international waters to Nigerian parents who have yet to name him.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The baby with his mother, Faith, MSF midwife Jonquil Nicholl, and his big brother Rollres. Photograph: Alva White/MSF

His parents, Otis and Faith, and his older brothers Victory, seven, and Rollres, five, were among 253 people onboard one of two dinghies that were rescued. MSF said among those rescued, 97 people were under 18, 10 children were under five, and four babies were less than a year old, including the newborn.

Faith said: “I was very stressed on the rubber boat, sitting on the floor of the boat with the other women and children. Panicking that I would go into labour. I could feel my baby moving, he would move down and then move back up again. I had been having contractions for three days.”

An MSF midwife, Jonquil Nicholl, delivered the baby and said it was “a very normal birth in dangerously abnormal conditions”.

“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.

“How can this still happen in 2016? That families, vulnerable people, pregnant women, tiny babies and unborn babies are forced to risk their lives in the Mediterranean Sea when they should be receiving assistance and protection.”