Dumping Grounds for People
Yana Buhrer Tavanier is one of the best journalists I know. She has just completed a four-month long undercover investigation of institutions for people with mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities located in Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania. Yana finds out that the people in our society who need most care get least. This also holds on a micro level in the institutions responsible for those men and women - the patients in direst states are the most neglected. Here are the first few paragraphs.
Reform is coming too slowly to institutions for adults with intellectual and mental health disabilities in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, where chronic neglect, filthy conditions, and the use of physical restraints and high-dosage drugs to control behaviour remain routine.
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By Yana Buhrer Tavanier in Sofia, Goren Chiflik, Svilengrad, Radovets, Oborishte, Belgrade, Kulina, Churug, Bucharest, Mocrea and Gura Vaii
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Someone is screaming.
Someone is screaming her head off in what seems a desolate part of the yard. There is a fence surrounding some shacks and, with each step taken towards it, the shrieks get louder. Ten more steps and there’s a gate in the fence. Another ten and all hell is let loose.
There is the screaming woman – barefoot, skinny and dressed in rags.
There is another woman, unable to walk, rolling on the ground outside. She is literally covered in flies – fifty, perhaps a hundred flies on her face, filthy clothes, bare feet, hands and the two chunks of bread she’s holding.
The story is available in English and Bulgarian. You can find more by browsing the site.
Great job Yana.
