HEALTH-YUGOSLAVIA: Society Becomes Another Handicap

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 4 2002 (IPS) - Tatjana lives on the eighth floor of a Belgrade apartment building and never leaves home.

At 24, she suffers from cerebral paralysis. Her father is too old and too sick to take her anywhere. He cannot carry her to the bathroom, so he cleans her with a wet cloth and cleans the space around her.

Tatjana spends her life on the floor, where her father feeds her and changes her.

Tatjana is among half a million people in Serbia who are handicapped and living in circumstances that medical authorities call a “catastrophe”. Many among them became handicapped in Serbia’s many wars.

“The word ‘catastrophe’ is the only one that can be used,” says Viktorija Cucic, head of a research team that surveyed the problems of the handicapped.

“Families are the only place where the handicapped can find an oasis and family members are the only ones these people can rely on,” says Srecko Mihajlovic, member of the research team.

The team surveyed 36 municipalities in Serbia, the bigger part of the Yugoslav federation. Backed by Handicap International and the European Union Bureau for Humanitarian Help, this is the first ever study of the handicapped in Serbia.

The study ‘Handicapped and Their Environment’ indicates that about half a million people in a country of 7.4 million can be described as handicapped or invalids. That means that 6.4 per cent of the Serb population suffers from some physical or mental disorder.

The survey shows that 87 per cent of the handicapped are unemployed, less than one per cent participate in any rehabilitation workshop, and most have never been to school.

They face insurmountable obstacles because of a lack of architectural provisions for the handicapped. They live in an environment burdened with almost mediaeval prejudice.

“The prejudice ranges from the common stand that the handicapped are worth less, that they are paying for some past sins, and have no right to h appiness,” says Mihajlovic. “It’s no wonder that 45 per cent of the handicapped in Serbia think life is not worth living.”

Most of the 3,000 handicapped and members of their families interviewed by the research team said they faced prejudice, unkind behaviour and negligence in hospitals.

“Health specialists, the social care system, even some cultural and religious institutions have built barriers against handicapped people in Serbia,” Cucic says. “The same goes for those who became invalid in the wars of the nineties.”

In the decade of the rule of former leader Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia lived through four wars and a traumatic 11 weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing that left thousands dead or wounded.

Cucic says that in Serbia the handicapped have no rights, are prevented from showing that they can be useful members of society, and live mostly on the verge of poverty.

“Within the broader society, we found no respect for the regulations of the United Nations (UN) on equal rights of the handicapped and the UN Convention of Children’s Rights that call for abrogation of discrimination in the field of education,” says Damjan Tatic, legal expert with the team. “In our country, the handicapped are practically nowhere and their families are the only ones to support them”.

But there are still some groups of handicapped who have helped one another lead decent lives.

The Association of Dystrophy Victims “Olivera Jandric” in Belgrade has supported members through a network of printing shops and health food stores for more than 35 years now. Dystrophics work at the shops or provide accounting or organisational assistance. The income goes into a joint fund for therapy and medicines for its several thousand members.

Leaders of the Association say they owe their success to some highly educated victims of the disease decades ago. “It was pioneering work at the time, but it brought results,” says Aleksa Stojanovic from the Association. “We survived the poverty of the nineties, when the Serbian state did nothing for its healthy population.” They are the lucky ones.