Nineteen humanitarian aid groups are urging that steps be taken immediately to ease “desperate conditions” for more more than 17,000 migrants “crammed in Greek island reception centers with a total capacity for only 6,000.”

The groups, in a statement Thursday, said they were seeking”sustainable solutions” to relieve congestion and improve conditions.

Migrants, primarily from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan but also from African countries, are living in squalor on several overcrowded Greek islands near Turkey’s coast, according to the statement, whose signatories include Oxfam International.

That organization released a separate statement of complaint earlier this week, noting that “thousands of refugees and other migrants are trapped … in trailers and tents that are blazing hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. Access to running water is limited.”

With overcrowding, “the situation is particularly alarming for women, who are at heightened risk of sexual violence and abuse,” the Oxfam statement said.

“Living conditions are dreadful,” Oxfam’s advocacy officer in Greece, Marion Bouchetel, told VOA’s English to Africa service in a phone interview Thursday.

She said that Moria, a camp on the eastern island of Lesbos near Turkey, holds nearly 8,800 people,almost triple its intended maximum capacity of 3,100.

The aid groups’ complaints dovetail with those of local government authorities, who found that, at Moria, broken sewage pipes have spilled wastewater near the tents and shipping containers that provide housing.

“The fact that there are too many people in tents and containers is also a risk for the spreading of diseases,” Bouchetel said, adding that “there are problems with access to medical services.”

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