“The record amount was last year, when we had a few visits at the beginning of the year and realized that there was an urgent need to change things. Then record amounts were allocated for the given institutions – the Psychiatric Hospital in Balti received 5.5 million lei, the Psychiatric Hospital in Chisinau – 3.8 million lei, and the Psychiatric Hospital in Orhei – 2.2 million lei. This year we have allocated amounts, a little smaller, but depending on the possibilities. These are initial allocations, at a certain period they will be re-evaluated and depending on the absorption of this money, more will be allocated if the projects for which these allocations are intended are implemented”, said Ion Prisăcaru.
The deputy of the People’s Advocate, Oxana Gumennaia, claims that in recent years the conditions in psychiatric hospitals have improved:
“For example, things were repaired, windows were changed, furniture was bought. We all understand that to make a psychiatric hospital very friendly we need more money. First of all, because the spaces in Psychiatric Hospitals, the rooms are very large. Beneficiaries are very complicated. There are acts of violence among the beneficiaries with psychiatric diseases, and if we have these big, voluminous halls, and there are 10-13 people sitting there, conflicts can be more difficult to manage. The entire infrastructure of the Psychiatric Hospitals had to be revised because it is not an ordinary hospital”.
On October 27, 2022, a fire broke out at the Clinical Psychiatry Hospital in the city of Codru. 62 patients from the ward dedicated to people with mental illnesses barricaded themselves on the second floor and set fire to mattresses and furniture. Five months later, the Office of the People’s Advocate announces that the patient who caused the fire did not need hospital treatment, and he was to serve his sentence of life imprisonment in the penitentiary. In fact, this was only one of the conclusions after a case-by-case investigation by the Office of the People’s Advocate. In the presented report, the conditions in which the patients in Ward 10 of the hospital are also come to light. The series of recommendations from the Ombudsman were submitted to the Ministry of Health.
