Children’s Camp Causes Worry

By Irina Titova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: July 25, 2012 (Issue # 1719)

A scandal has erupted over a children’s summer camp in the Leningrad Oblast after the LenOblast prosecutor’s office said the children attending the camp were not being fed enough and that the living conditions were too poor to host HIV-positive children.

At least 112 children from St. Petersburg children’s homes are currently residing at the summer camp in the village of Roshchino in the Vyborgsky district. Some of these children have HIV.

According to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, institutions for health and recreation can only receive children who do not have special dietary or medical requirements. When Yunost registered as a camp, it reportedly failed to provide for additional health facilities for children with additional needs.

The majority of children with HIV receive anti-retrovirus therapy. Infected children, especially those receiving this treatment, require constant medical check-ups to monitor side effects, the prosecutor’s office said last week.

The HIV-positive campers at Yunost were being given their medicine, which was stored in a staff room within the children’s reach, not from medical workers but from speech therapists, the press service of the prosecutor’s office said.

The press service also reported that personnel did not have the skills required to provide medical help to campers in the event of an emergency and that the camp health office was lacking a number of essential items of medical equipment such as scales and a device for measuring blood pressure. The rooms in the camp were overcrowded, in some rooms there was no hot water and there were not enough bedside tables, it said.

The Vyborg prosecutor’s office has opened a case against the camp director, Interfax reported.

St. Petersburg’s children’s ombudsman, Svetlana Agapitova, expressed dismay over comments made by the federal authorities concerning the living conditions of children at the camp.

On her blog on the St. Petersburg children’s ombudsman’s website, Agapitova said inspections at institutions such as summer camps were necessary, but they should be done “systematically and not impulsively,” by collecting facts and opinions.

Agapitova said that before the camp opened, city services — including the consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, the food safety department, the fire department and the Education Committee, had checked conditions at the camp and given it the green light to open for the season.

“Do you think they have all conspired to harm children? Does a day-long inspection by a guest official put in question the work of many specialists?” Agapitova asked.

Agapitova criticized the conclusions made by the federal inspection, which Russia’s children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov later shared on his Twitter account. Astakhov wrote that the children were playing card games with a deck of regular cards (which is strongly disapproved of in Russia on the grounds that it encourages gambling) at the camp, but Agapitova disputed that, saying they were playing the children’s card game UNO. Agapitova also said that the children had regular meals five times a day with a rotating menu and that the medical office had all the necessary licenses.

“Yes, there were alarming comments on the parent’s forum, but they were directed not against camp administrators, but against the city’s Children’s Home No. 1, whose children were spending time at the camp,” Agapitova said.

Agapitova said the children’s home had attracted concern from various departments before.

Children’s Home No. 1 is an institution for HIV-positive children. There were also children from several other local children’s homes at the camp, as well as children who live with their parents.

Moscow officials inspected the camp after volunteers who came to visit the children at the camp wrote that the children there were living in unsanitary conditions and were not being fed enough. The volunteers said that they brought the children confectionary and berries, but noticed that the children were in need not only of dessert foods, but also of more regular food.

Astakhov said on Twitter that numerous sanitary violations had been discovered at the camp and that complaints had been made by some of the children.

Astakhov said that during a discussion, the children said that they received normal food and a balanced diet, but that there was no 10-day rotating menu as stipulated by consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor.

“Older children smoke openly. Children complained about harsh treatment by a tutor. Medicine was not stored at the appropriate temperature. Medicine past its expiry date was also found. The camp does not have a pediatric medical license, making medical treatment given at the camp illegal,” Astakhov said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, an inspection commission sent by St. Petersburg’s Education Committee to the camp — which remains open — did not confirm the fact of children going hungry or the lice infestation that volunteers claimed to have seen, Interfax reported.

The St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office did, however, find certain fire safety and hygiene violations, Interfax reported.