A controversial media report on the shutting down of one the city’s hospitals led officials on Wednesday to address the issue of healthcare for the elderly, which critics have referred to as “horrifying.” 

“On May 24 the Sofia Perovskaya Hospital (Hospital No. 5) was emptied. The personnel were fired. The patients, helpless and unprotected, had been hurriedly moved out and ‘spread’ among the city’s other hospitals… two elderly people died after the impetuous move,” Chas Pik weekly reported Wednesday in an article titled “The old men in the valley of death.”

Stas Demin, president of the Old City charity foundation which worked closely with the hospital in question, confirmed the validity of the report at a news conference on Wednesday.

“The information presented in Chas Pik’s article is the absolute truth,” Demin said.

According to Demin, the incident is evidence of a crisis in the healthcare system in general. 

“We went to this hospital and recorded horrifying facts. The patients in Hospital No. 28 [where some of the patients from Hospital No. 5 were admitted] haven’t had any treatment or care whatsoever and their relatives were not informed where they would be moved to. These are the facts, you can’t get away from them.”

“These old people in the hospitals I visited personally just wanted to eat — they were asking for food and medicine.”

Vladimir Zholobov, first deputy head of City Hall’s Health Committee, speaking at the news conference, admitted that certain problems exist, but said the situation is better than that described by Demin.

“I read some really horrible things in the Chas Pik article stating that the patients [of the hospital in question] are being accommodated in corridors with no mattresses on their beds. I would like to report that I paid a surprise visit to the hospital yesterday. 

“There were two free beds available at the nursing unit, all the patients were in wards, not in corridors, and they had all been provided with bed linen.”
“I talked to patients during my visit — the ones that could talk — and they didn’t make any particular complaints,” Zholobov continued.

Speaking about the quality of hospital meals, on which government currently spends around 40 rubles ($1.50) per person per day, Zholobov said “Of course hospital meals are not restaurant meals and so there will always be complaints. It’s impossible to please everyone when you cook for a thousand people.”

Igor Pyaterechenko, head of the board for medical treatment at the City Hall’s health committee said that to his knowledge the shutting down of the hospital didn’t affect the well-being of the patients in anyway. 

When asked whether the moving of the patients to new hospitals was “painless” for the patients, Pyaterechenko replied, “Absolutely.” 

“According to the reports from the government, everything is alright in the city. Every year [the authorities] produce various decrees, acts and statistics on the expansion of the city’s stock of hospital beds, according to which all is well. But, in reality, it’s all bad,” Demin said.

“The situation with the elderly is getting worse. We are the oldest city in Russia if you take into account the percentage of elderly citizens in St. Petersburg,” Natalia Yevdokimova, chairwoman of the Legislative Assembly’s committee on social issues said Wednesday.

“Moreover, we are getting even older: young people die whereas the elderly manage to hang on into old age. Therefore, the problem of taking care of the elderly is getting more and more urgent,” Yevdokimova said, calling for urgent changes and the creation of a new geriatric program for the city.