Russia’s Human Rights Council: people kept in Moscow’s pre-trial facilities do not receive urgent medical aid or diagnostics

Since October, doctors of the Federal Penitentiary Service have stopped sending people from pre-trial detention centres for urgent medical care, blood sampling, ultrasound, or dedicated medical specialists, Eva Merkacheva, a member of Russia’s Human Rights Council, told Kommersant.

She says this happens because there is no agreement between the Penitentiary Service and Moscow’s Department of Healthcare.

For instance, a group of women who were diagnosed with uterine myomas and a group of men with prostate cancer, as well as two “critically ill cancer sufferers” from Cuba did not have obligatory medical insurance and were denied medical care.

“Why was the lack of contracts for medical treatment only revealed in the autumn? How was help provided prior to that? This year, 30 people died in Moscow pre-trial detention centres in only ten months. This never happened in nine years as I worked in Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission,” Merkacheva said.

As Kommersant writes with reference to a letter from Moscow’s Department of Healthcare sent on 19 October to one of the departments of the Federal Penitentiary Service, currently “there are no agreements between the penal system and Moscow’s state financed healthcare organisations.”

At the same time, the department claims that emergency medical care for prisoners “is provided free of charge and in full,” however, they admit that Moscow’s Penitentiary Service paid for the treatment of only one prisoner in the last 18 months.