Schiff, a Greenwich native now living in Weston, is to leave Tuesday on her second humanitarian mission to the Greek island of Lesbos, the gateway through which most refugees from the Middle East and Sudan enter the European Union. Michael Borrero, a Greenwich Hospital nurse, will accompany her.

Another key component of IOM’s intervention will be community mobilization activities aiming at empowering community leaders to raise awareness and increase their communities’ knowledge on the causes, symptoms and modes of prevention of EVD in order to positively influence their communities and promote behaviour change.

As Boko Haram attacks increase in northern Nigeria, millions of refugees fleeing the Islamist insurgent group are creating a strain on local resources, aid groups say. More than a million Nigerians have been displaced as they attempt to flee Boko Haram’s violent attacks, according to the International Organization for Migration. They have settled in various cities around northern Nigeria, leaving aid groups and the Nigerian government scrambling to keep up with the growing demand for food and supplies.

On International Migrants Day 2014 (December 18), Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) William Lacy Swing wrote in a New York Times op-ed that 2014 was “the deadliest year for migrants on record” characterized by “unprecedented anti-migrant sentiment worldwide.”