Death in St. Petersburg boarding school noticed in Moscow – Kommersant

The Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova, joined the checks of the psycho-neurological boarding school (PNI) No. 10 in St. Petersburg. Earlier, the head of the capital’s multidisciplinary palliative care center, Anna Federmesser, reported seven cases of death of disabled people in a boarding school where 1,000 people are kept. She stated that this was due to malnutrition and lack of nursing care. Earlier, the ICR opened a criminal case on causing death by negligence. The institution is also checked by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Roszdravnadzor, Rospotrebnadzor and Rostrud.

Mrs. Moskalkova reported in his Telegram channel about checking PNI No. 10 in the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg “in connection with a video message about the facts of the death of orphans.” According to the Ombudsman, her representative visited the institution together with the Commissioner for Human Rights in St. Petersburg. They visited the department of intensive developmental care, in which former pupils of orphanages-boarding schools live – people with mental and physical development disorders aged 18 to 25 years.

The reason for visiting PNI No. 10 was a video message from the head of the capital’s multidisciplinary palliative care center and the founder of the Vera hospice charity fund, Anna Federmesser.

In April 2023, Anna Federmesser reported the death of at least seven children with severe multiple developmental disorders (SMDD) in the boarding school, specifying that the reasons were their exhaustion and insufficient care due to staff shortages.

According to Ms. Federmesser, children with SMDD need a separate medical post and special nutrition, but due to a lack of staff, there is only one employee for several children who does not have time to “feed everyone, change clothes, take a walk with them.” At the same time, volunteers were not allowed to work in the PNI, Ms. Federmesser argued. According to her, human rights activists informed the director of the boarding school Ivan Verevkin about the problems, who, according to Anna Federmesser, promised to deal with the problem after cases of hospitalization of patients in the Alexander Hospital in St. Petersburg.

As a result, “recently” in PNI No. 10, according to Mrs. Federmesser, seven children died. According to her, the staff of the boarding school, who died on April 17, was twice taken to the Alexander Hospital and left there without supervision. Federmesser, in her appeal, asked the city authorities, Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, the leadership of the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Health, as well as Tatyana Moskalkova and Children’s Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova “to punish those responsible for the death of children.” And take measures so that this ward of the PNI becomes “the last to die from the indifference of the guardian.”

On the fact of what happened in the PNI, the main investigative department of the TFR in St. Petersburg aroused criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on causing death by negligence. The press service of the department reported that the staff of the boarding school “due to improper performance of their professional duties in caring for citizens suffering from mental illness, negligently allowed the death of six adult residents living in the boarding school in the period from 2022.” Source “RIA News” in the investigating authorities previously reported that three of the deceased had cerebral edema in the causes of death, indicating a general lack of body weight, and two more had progressive respiratory failure. Maria Lvova-Belova, in turn, promised to check all children’s social institutions in the country, “especially the mercy departments.”

Ms. Moskalkova said that now the prosecutor’s office of St. Petersburg is conducting an inspection at PNI No. 10, which has attracted the Russian Emergencies Ministry, Roszdravnadzor, Rospotrebnadzor and Rostrud. Based on the results of this audit, an assessment of the activity of the boarding school “in terms of the implementation of the current legislation” will be given, the ombudsman added. At the same time, Tatyana Moskalkova stated that, according to the results of her check, the living conditions of the guests in the boarding school “comply with the current sanitary rules and norms.”

Ivan Tyazhlov