Prisoners are not called to the doctor – Newspaper Kommersant No. 221 (7422) dated 11/29/2022

In Moscow, since October 2022, “the removal of pre-trial detention centers to hospitals has stopped” for diagnosis and emergency treatment, Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC), told Kommersant. Civilian medical institutions, according to her, do not accept persons under investigation, citing the lack of agreements between the Moscow Health Department and the capital’s department of the Federal Penitentiary Service. The capital’s department of health denies a failure in the provision of medical care, but admits that the Moscow department of the Federal Penitentiary Service paid for the treatment of only one prisoner by civilian doctors in a year and a half.

Since October, the doctors of the Federal Penitentiary Service (staff members of pre-trial detention centers) have stopped sending detainees from the pre-trial detention center for urgent medical care, blood sampling, ultrasound, visits to specialized narrow specialists, Eva Merkacheva, a member of the HRC, told Kommersant. As a reason, Mrs. Merkacheva calls “the absence of relevant agreements between the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Department of Health of Moscow.” “This is a catastrophe, many of the citizens who have not yet been convicted in the pre-trial detention center are sick, but they do not receive help,” said Ms. Merkacheva.

Thus, women from SIZO-6 who had previously been diagnosed with uterine fibroids, men with prostate cancer from SIZO-4, and two “severely oncological” citizens of Cuba who did not have compulsory medical insurance policies faced refusals in treatment, the human rights activist said. “Why did the lack of contracts for medical care surface in the fall? How was the help provided before this?” Mrs. Merkacheva is indignant. “This year, 30 people died in Moscow pre-trial detention centers in ten months. For nine years of my work in the POC of Moscow (Eva Merkacheva was a member of the capital’s POC until October 2022.— “b”) has never happened before.

At the disposal of Kommersant was a letter from the Moscow Health Department, sent on October 19 to one of the departments of the capital’s Federal Penitentiary Service. “Currently, there are no agreements between the institution of the penal system and medical organizations of the state healthcare system of the city of Moscow,” the document says. It also notes that the Department of Health is “ready to return to considering the issue of organizing the provision of medical care” to Moscow prisoners. “Willingness to return” to the issue of treatment, Eva Merkacheva is sure, proves the absence of such treatment at the time of writing the letter.

The Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia did not respond to Kommersant’s request. However, on November 24, the press bureau of the department informed the Mercy.ru resource: “The information about the lack of medical care in the Moscow pre-trial detention center is not true. If necessary, the provision of medical care is carried out in medical institutions in Moscow.

The press service of the Moscow Department of Health told Kommersant about the procedure for treating detainees in a pre-trial detention center in civilian hospitals. It is regulated by the Law “On the Fundamentals of Protecting the Health of Citizens in the Russian Federation”, Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 1466 of 2012 and Order of the Ministry of Justice No. 285 of 2017. Treatment in state hospitals, the department stressed, is “only if it is impossible to provide medical care in the institutions of the penal system.” “In this case, the consultations of medical specialists of the medical organization and the provision of assistance are carried out at the expense of the budgetary allocations of the federal budget provided for by the Federal Penitentiary Service,” the department’s response says. “Primary health care, specialized, including high-tech, medical care and palliative care are provided in accordance with the agreement between the institution of the penitentiary system and the medical organization.

The response of the Department of Health emphasizes that emergency and urgent medical care for prisoners “is provided freely, free of charge and in full.” It is also reported there that between the departments since 2012 “a framework termless cooperation agreement has been concluded”, under which the Moscow Federal Penitentiary Service has requested planned medical care for detainees 479 times since 2020, of which 183 times – in 2022. “All requests were satisfied and fulfilled in full for those patients who were delivered to a medical organization by the UFSIN,” the department of health assures, indicating that the UFSIN paid “only for one case of treatment (in 2021)”, but However, the hospitals “continue to provide medical care to prisoners, despite the absence of agreements signed by the Federal Penitentiary Service.” The department insists that in 2022 the treatment of prisoners in civilian hospitals “continues”, and other information “does not correspond to reality.”

“The problem of not providing medical care is indeed a serious one,” confirms Georgy Ivanov, a lawyer for the Team Against Torture (he was a member of the PMC of Moscow until October 2022). planned medical care. The needs of the prisoner for such assistance are determined by the Federal Penitentiary Service, and this assistance, as the Department of Health correctly points out, should be carried out at the expense of the budget of the Federal Penitentiary Service. The Department of Health directly indicates that over the past years, the money of the Federal Penitentiary Service for these purposes was spent once, and hospitals provided medical care free of charge.

The expert explains that, within the framework of the agreements, the procedure for considering applications from the Federal Penitentiary Service for the treatment of prisoners in the institutions of the depzdrav is also determined, however, “the FPS actually does not want to pay”, referring to the lack of consent to treatment from the depzdrav. Patients in this situation are “hostages of the lack of sufficient funding from the Federal Penitentiary Service and the managerial helplessness of both parties,” Georgy Ivanov points out.

Ms. Merkacheva notes that the failure in the provision of medical care in October began to be corrected only after her reports in the media and requests from Kommersant to the Federal Penitentiary Service and the Department of Health: “According to my information, officials turned everything back, they began to provide assistance again in isolated cases.” Whether the failure in the contractual field has been resolved and what are the chances that it will not happen again is still unclear, says Eva Merkacheva.

Maria Starikova, Natalya Kostarnova