THE Greek government has launched an inquiry into the treatment of mentally and physically handicapped people on the holiday island of Lesbos, writes Anthee Carassava. The investigation follows a report in The Sunday Times Magazine last week, which exposed conditions of appalling squalor and neglect endured by 81 patients at the I Theomitor institution. A director of the institution has admitted it needs to recruit specialist staff.
The report showed that I Theomitor, originally built to house tuberculosis sufferers, had become an effective dumping ground for patients with severe mental problems from the notorious Léros asylum, where the sight of hundreds of chained inmates in the 1980s prompted the European commission to spend millions of pounds on health reform in Greece.
The I Theomitor scandal has confirmed the fears of many Greeks that their standards of mental health care lag far behind those elsewhere in the European Union. I Theomitor, meaning Mother of God, has been held up as an example of the state's disdain for its most vulnerable citizens.
Two senior health ministry officials scrambled to the island last week to assess I Theomitor in the remote village of Agiassos. Their inspection and consultations with the institution's board of directors lasted for two days.
Alexandros Kazazis, a member of the board, claimed the officials had concluded that all was well, apart from a need for some maintenance work. However, he acknowledged that the board would be meeting quickly to appoint a full-time doctor and specialist staff, and to consider new financial proposals.
Official figures indicate that it has 83 staff and a budget of £2.6m, an amount that dwarfs the sums available to some small hospitals in Athens.
Officials said they had been aware of the institution's decrepitude for more than four years. In 1995, Manolis Skoulaki, the then undersecretary for health, declared: "I am ashamed to be a minister responsible for health and social welfare at a time when institutions such as the one in Agiassos operate in Greece."
The present undersecretary, Theodoros Kotsonis, who initiated the inquiry last week, has yet to make any official comment.