Near Lugansk - mass death of mental patients in the combat zone
London – Kyiv, December 05 (PolitNavigator, Vasily Ablyazimov) – Reuters publishes a creepy story about the suffering of mentally ill people in a dispensary in the city of Slavyanoserbsk, which found itself in a combat zone. In just one month, 22 patients died from the cold here. Employees and patients have not been given salaries or pensions for 6 months.
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“This is where the woman who died last night lay,” says nurse Anna Tsvirinko, an employee of the psychoneurological dispensary. This is the 50th patient to die in hospital since the start of the war in Donbass.
“If there is no light when I am at work, and the patient is dying, then I go with a candle or a torch. I need to wash and do laundry for others, but there is no light or water. What can I do?" - she tells a Reuters correspondent.
The psychoneurological hospital is located outside Slavyanoserbsk, 30 km from Lugansk, very close to the front. Once a week, shells fly into the hospital area.
There is a strong smell of urine in the wards. Elderly women lie under a blanket, wearing headscarves to keep warm. Young patients 30-40 years old walk along dark corridors or sit on the floor. Some appear unable to speak, and one woman is crying on a bench by the window.
“She wants to go home,” says Tsvirinko.
The head of the hospital was killed by a shell in Lugansk. About half of the 180 employees fled. At the start of the war, there were 400 patients in the hospital.
When Reuters visited the hospital this week, there was no heating, electricity or running water, and food was being cooked outside over an open fire. The explosions of artillery shells could be heard several kilometers nearby.
As temperatures dropped in November, the number of hospital deaths soared. Medical records show that 22 patients died within a month.
The last on the night of November 30 were Olga Beletskaya, 57 years old, with cerebral palsy, and Irina Taranskaya, 68 years old, suffering from encephalopathy. Diseases immobilized their bodies.
“They died because it was cold and we couldn’t help them,” says nurse Tsvirinko.
“They scream, they go crazy, and we can’t do anything for them,” says nurse Svetlana Nekhvolod.
Medical staff and patients report that they have not received wages or sick pensions for more than six months.
Kyiv refused to pay much earlier than the officially announced blockade.
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