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Bulgaria will close 28 public institutions for the mentally disabled and mentally ill over the next seven years, following an extremely critical report from the Council of Europe, the Sofia prosecutor’s office announced Friday, AFP reports.
The Bulgarian prosecutor’s office confirmed in a statement the abusive treatment reported in the report published Tuesday by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), including “violence by staff, isolation, poor hygiene and the smell of urine. , the use of unauthorized drugs “.
The Council of Europe CPT lamented in Tuesday’s report the lack of progress on the issues raised in its last mission in 2005, apart from a slight improvement in material living conditions.
The document evoked, among other things, cases where patients were tied to beds and beaten with sticks or where health workers insulted residents or even punched and kicked them.
Bulgaria was also criticized in 2018 by the European Psychiatric Association (EPA), which expressed concern about the isolation and lack of activity for the residents of these facilities, and the Bulgarian government subsequently launched a reform strategy, which is being adopted. in parliament.
In 2016 Bulgaria closed, under pressure from NGOs and the European Union, the last of the large abandoned centers for children with disabilities, structures inherited from the communist period. However, some NGOs pointed out that problems persist, regularly denouncing the existence of serious abuses in the new structures, smaller but lacking qualified personnel.
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