Russia shocked as volunteers report grim facts about nursing home
Published: 28 October, 2009, 17:02
Edited: 30 October, 2009, 10:19
TAGS: Conflict, Russia, Human rights
The director of a nursing home for the elderly in northwest Russia has been fired after a group of volunteers caused public outcry with their report about the terrible conditions in which patients had to live.
In mid-October a student working as a volunteer published a post in her blog describing the dreadful situation in the nursing home in the village of Yamm, in Pskov Region. Russian bloggers started distributing the information and eventually the report reached the mainstream media.
The volunteer, Liza Oleskina of the “Starost v Radost” (Aging with Joy), wrote that she had made a series of unsuccessful appeals to officials before deciding to confide in the blogosphere. She provided lots of shocking details, such as the fact that the building of the nursing house is in a disastrous condition and needs capital repairs. In addition, medical staff and management provide extremely poor treatment to the aged, leaving them to fade away silently due to the lack of medical assistance and proper daily care.
“They can’t complain, can’t ask for a glass of water to swallow a pill or a bed change. They stop understanding what’s going on”, says Liza Oleskina on her livejournal account.
According to another volunteer Marina Kochetkova, their organization has been supervising the nursing home since January 2008. During this period of time they have seen people’s ability to walk slowly deteriorate due to staff negligence. “The death rate there is sky-high compared to other institutions of the same kind. As long as a person can walk, he or she survives. The bed-ridden patients don’t live long”, says Kochevalova. She claims that her fellow volunteers have repeatedly contacted the regional social security department, but their inspections haven’t exposed any violations.
However, Russian website Regnum.ru published an interview with Yamm patients in which they said that the situation was not as grave as the volunteers had written. None of the patients said they wanted to be transferred to another place and the only request to the regional officials was to repair a bridge that connected the village with the district center.
Nevertheless, the outcry from the Internet and the media reached the upper ranks this week. Deputy Governor of Pskov Maksim Zhavoronkov visited the place together with his colleagues on Tuesday. The official denied giving any official comment, other than “It hurts a lot to see elderly people. They have lived a long life and deserve better. But so far I can neither confirm nor dismiss the information that has appeared in the media.”
According to Zhavoronkov, the administration has initiated a number of checks to investigate the situation. The first inspection will be performed by the regional prosecutor’s office. Overall, Pskov officials have promised to complete checks and deliver their verdict in 1-2 weeks.
Already on Wednesday the news arrived that Governor of the Pskov region Andrey Turchak had fired the director of the nursing home, Vladimir Popov.
The Yamm home for the elderly people was opened in a one-storey wooden building in 1994 and it currently houses 26 elderly people.
Read also: Elderly woman lives happily with 117 cats in one room
28.10.2009, 15:56
HIV-positive “stigmatized” even in health servicesIn Russia, HIV-positive people are discriminated not only by society in general, but also at healthcare institutions, said Doctor Denis Broun, regional director for the UNAIDS support team for Europe and Central Asia. |
28.10.2009, 18:27
6 comments
US destroyer shells Polish shoreThe American destroyer USS Ramage, which was participating in joint US-Polish maneuvers, has shelled the coast of Poland, local TV-channel TVN24 reports. |
I have read almost all 2000 comments to this livejournal's post. If somebody wants, you could read it English with google-translator and see those terrible pictures. This translation isn't brilliant, of course, but is good enough for understanding. http://o-liska.livejournal.com/26814.html?page=29#comments Read it, please, improve translation and send everywhere, to blogs, internet and paper media all over the world. Name and shame Russian bastards, who do this to old people. Maybe that helps to improve this outrageous situation with elderly care in Russia, where is normal, when old folk has bath once in week, who lies in bed without pads on rubber materess for months, who have bed sored 10 cm deep...
This article could have just as easily been written about bad nursing homes in the United States. There are a lot of terrible nursing homes here and some of the owners make huge profits by providing lousy care. Some of the owners are quite wealthy so a lot of the abuse never comes to light. America pretends to care for the elderly, but their heart is with the billionaire thieves on wall street. The government denied the old aged people their little social security raise for next year. They had billions but neglected the old people because they know the old people will probably forget before the congressional elections. They could come up with a small {token} bribe for the old people's vote just before the congressional elections because they like living the good life in congress.