Romania

Lest we forget...

Prezent - Images from Romanian child care centers

A team formed of Prezent weekly reporters and journalists from the American TV station ABC went to several children care centers to see the living conditions of mentally disabled children.

The American journalists were interested both in the children who were mentioned in the report made public by the Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) organization, quoted on Wednesday by the New York Times but also in the children in other centers that had not been visited by the American organization.

In some of these centers, the patients are given a correct medical treatment, they live decently and are given proper food, in other centers (which were not quoted in the MDRI report but were visited by the ABC-Prezent team), the buildings are almost collapsing on the children and the latter are beaten almost daily.

The feature made by ABC-Prezent was broadcast by ABC on May 10 and was also quoted by the Washington Post. The team of journalists was accompanied by one of the MDRI investigators. It has to be noted that, despite the hurried excuses made by the Romanian authorities, none of the images presented are from 2004 or older, as they were filmed in the last couple of months and the more recent were shot at the end of April this year.

The Prichindel center in Alexandria is well supported financially and the children here live in decent conditions. The 16 children have a doctor and live in rooms of one or two people. The investment in Prichindel was of one million euros and the patients are carefully treated. They call the nurses "mom" and the latter actually behave like mothers.

Unfortunately the situation is not the same in all such centers in Romania. In the center in Costesti, Vrancea County, there are 46 children and only four nurses in one shift. The hospital is in renovation and the patients survive in conditions that are hard to imagine. In some of the beds there are two children sleeping. The team of reporters found a room with "vegetable-children" which were eating thread.

"What can they do? They are consuming their energy," a nurse "reassured" us, being not at all worried by the children's behavior.