Moscow: Russia`s correction facilities
took lives of over four thousand prison inmates last year, a
senior official said.
"We are worried the disease and death rates are very
high," said deputy Prosecutor-General Yevgeny Zabarchuk.
"Most of the prisoners are not very old people or
children, they are able-bodied citizens in their prime age.
And yet, many of them do not live to the release day, or
become disabled for the rest of their lives," he said
yesterday.
"Over the past year 4,150 prisoners died, and detention
centres have registered 521 deaths."
The deputy prosecutor-general said that the rights to
health protection and to proper sanitary conditions were not
observed.
"The medical equipment is utterly out of date, it has been
used for 20-30 years already...Most detention centres do not
have modern medical equipment at all. We have exposed poor
medical care in the Arkhangelsk, Vladimir, Smolensk and other
regions," the government-published Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily
quoted Zabarchuk.
Initial and regular tests and fluorographic examinations
were ignored at some penitentiaries in Dagestan, as well as
those in the Astrakhan and Penza regions, he said.
"Many medical staffers in Bashkortostan, Komi and the
Leningrad Region had no documents proving their education or
professional skills," he added.
PTI
