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Photo ID: 8463
Gallery ID: 53 - Disease & healthcare
| Photo Title: 01\\Mute | Digital Items Quality: JPG File
Dimensions: 2500(px) x 1631(px)
File Size: 0.52(mb)
Price: $150
Quality: JPG File
Dimensions: 800(px) x 521(px)
File Size: 0.12(mb)
Price: $80
Quality: JPG File
Dimensions: 400(px) x 260(px)
File Size: 0.03(mb)
Price: $20
| Photographer/Artist:
Yana Paskova | View all photos by this person
Yana Paskova is a freelancer born in Bulgaria, but based in NYC, after working in Chicago and chasing the presidential candidates (with a camera) across Iowa, South Carolina, Michigan, Florida, Tennesee, and Illinois. While she appreciates the aesthetics of all forms of photography, in addition to making pictures vehicles of it, she aims to use her work to shed light on the forgotten corners of the world, and those who suffer there. |
Description:
Photo Story Intro: While many Bulgarians are concerned with the rising numbers of young, capable citizens fleeing a post-totalitarian climate with a shredded political safety net and financial capabilities, a different kind of "brain drain" receives less attention. The staff and patients of many health institutions -- such as this psychiatry ward in Vidin, Bulgaria -- greatly suffer from an economically disadvantaged health care system. It is a place where the sick rarely get better. The hospital's many financial maladies do not allow it to provide enough of the basic services necessary for recovery. This means: 1. no security personnel, cameras, or locked, insulated rooms for unstable residents; 2. minimal treatment for leaking ceilings, bursting bathroom pipes, and rodent and flea invasions; 3. inability to provide basic amenities, such as bed sheets and dining utensils; 4. lacking mental stimulation for its patients; 5. inconsistent medical treatment. To stay open, hospitals such as this one will have to live up to a new set of health and safety standards when Bulgaria is accepted into the European Union in January 2007.
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Photo Caption: The thirty-five-year old "Pharaoh" as he prefers to be called, slams a Bulgarian coin on his forehead as he says, "Money controls everything. Money is why I am here. Money is why I will never get out. We have no voice here; only money speaks."
He entered an out-of-town mental hospital after getting violent in jail, where he served time for stealing. He lost 20 kilograms because of the decrepit conditions in the hospital. "I just stopped eating. I mean, you could see the snot floating around in the soup. The food is better at this hospital, but nothing else is an improvement."
He sought accountability for its crumbling walls, defunct plumbing, lack of basic amenities and insect infestation, and said he sometimes expressed it violently: "You know, I used to chase around nurses with pieces of broken glass just to try to slit their throats. I'm ok now because I have medication, but when I don't, ooooh, I get so crazy!"
This patient, like the others, can leave the hospital unescorted whenever he wishes.
The ward's staff hopes (if it receives funding grants) to equip several of its rooms with heavy doors, locks and insulated walls that will be used to hold dangerous psychopaths. One of the European Union standards for mental hospitals will be the ability to house mentally unstable individuals who could harm others and themselves. But paramedic T. T. said the salaries of hospital staff would not be enough to match the new educational and health standards outlined by the EU.
"How can we pay to live up to them when we have doctors and professors driving taxis at night so they can make ends meet?" he says. "There isn't any structure in Bulgaria to help the mentally ill. What we really need is a strong Social Service system." |
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