[A-PAL] A-PAL Urgent! -Pristina Hospital claims no more care for orphans

[Alice Mead]

ALBANIAN PRISONER ADVOCACY

   APRIL 2, 2002
			A-PAL STATEMENT

    With nearly all prisoners back in Kosova, we turn our attention 
now to other human rights and civil rights issues--at the moment, 
the most urgent is the humanitarian crisis regarding the 30 
abandoned children in Prishtina Hospital. As anyone who has been in 
this sorry excuse of a hospital knows, it is a place with no food 
for patients, no medicine, no xrays, no chemo, no bandaids, no 
aspirin, and has outbreaks of communicable diseases. It is no place 
for healthy people and certainly not a good choice for the ill.

    Since 1999, a number of infants, now some are nearly three 
years old, have been kept on a ward there. Why they have been kept 
in an institution--some supervision was at one time done by ICRC and 
Save the Children--when world-wide it is commonly known that the 
best practice to place children in families is a question no one we 
contacted was able or willing to ever answer. The children have had 
outbreaks of illness, had diapers changed only once every twelve 
hours. They lay for hours in their own soiled diapers. This was 
BEFORE the now announced shortage of shampoo and diapers.

   This funding situation is both irresponsible and absurd. The 
babies should be placed immediately with families while new funding 
for their care in foster homes is found. They should then be placed 
for adoption as soon as possible. Their health, education and 
welfare is in dire jeopardy. UNMIK is violating the international 
rights of the child. And so is every other organization who knows 
about this, but has done nothing.

>> The message below is looking for funding for diapers and shampoo 
>> on behalf of the hospital.  Thanks to World Vision funding of 
>> nurses' salaries, formula,
>> diapers, and equipment, the 30-some abandoned babies at the hospital have
>> been fed and kept clean to date, but World Vision has withdrawn its
>> support.
>>
>> Rather than continuing donor support to the mismanaged hospital, I ask for
>> your assistance in UNMIK (SRSG?) in shutting down the abandoned
>> baby unit at the hospital and shifting the babies to foster families, NGO
>> children's homes, or international adoptions.  The hospital staff is
>> unwilling to interact with the infants; even if the babies continue to be
>> fed and clothed, they are at enormous risk of permanent psychological
>> damage. The first three years of life are critical to social and
>> cognitive development, and it's criminal that these babies have been allowed to
>> languish in this sterile environment for so long.  Already we see a
>> 12-month old baby who rocks her head side to side for lack of
>> any other stimulation, and an older boy who compulsively stares at his
>> hand.
>>
>> Pillar II's Gabriel Rutten has been working on an international adoption
>> law, but until it is passed, and considering that the hospital is unable to
>> support these babies, I would hope the Quint and UNMIK could implement an
>> interim emergency directive.