BBC 4 Documentary By Kate Blewett

If a picture is worth a thousand words Kate Blewett’s moving pictures showing the horrifying suffering of 75 disabled orphans in a state-run institute in Bulgaria must be worth millions of words. The award-winning director filmed for several months in a state-run institute for disabled children located in a small Bulgarian village, Mogilino.

Long before the broadcasting of the film Bulgaria has been criticised for having one of the highest numbers of children in state institutional care in the EU. There are a number of websites with shocking images of suffering children placed in horrible conditions looking like twisted corpses and deprived of basic human care. Despite international criticism reform was virtually non existent. The broadcasting of the documentary in the UK and a number of European countiries  including a screening before the European Parliament in 2008 prompted a UK Campaign for Bulgaria’s Abandoned Children which eventually triggered a process of institutional care reform in Bulgaria.

Following the broadcasting of the film many British, Bulgarian and international charities intensified their campaign for the closing of state-run institutions like Mogilino. The Mogilino institution finally closed on the 11th of October 2009 following further pressure from the EU and the BBC. For more information about the Campaign for Bulgaria’s Abandoned Children go to http://www.tbact.org.

The Lora Foundation

A picture is worth a thousand words: The girl in the photos is 7 years old and weighs 7 kilograms. Her name is Lora and she was a charge of the state placed in orphanage for children with disabilities in Dobromirtzi in Bulgaria. Lora was diagnosed with 'brain damage' and cerebral palsy. A South African couple Jack and Elsabe Louw visited the orphanage in 1998 and were told "she'll be dead soon". Against all odds and against the system the South African couple succeeded to admit Lora to a hospital in Sofia. The doctors were amazed the girl was still alive but the medical tests showed no sign of brain damage. Lora was simply extremely neglected and malnourished.

Lora was taken to South Africa for treatment and today the girl who was once bedridden and diagnosed with brain damage lives a happy healthy life. She swims, likes the outdoors, draws, paints, likes music and speaks Afrikaan, English and some Bulgarian.

The South African couple who adopted Lora established a private foundation working on the ground in Bulgaria to help other children like Lora http://www.lorafoundation.co.za .

A journalistic investigation published in 2009 by Yana Buhrer Tavanier This is a journalistic investigation conducted in the course of four months mostly under cover by Yana Buhrer Tavanier, a fellow of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence in 2009. The author provides a thorough report about numerous human rights abuses, inhuman and degrading treatment, filthy conditions and appalling chronic neglect onto death in state-run institutions for adults with mental conditions and mental disabilities. The article Dumping Grounds for People was produced as part of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. To read more you can go to the website which contains the entire journalistic investigation http://dumpinggroundsforpeople.wordpress.com.

The video below offers a brief glimpse at the lives of pysically and mentally disabled children placed in state institutes in Bulgaria. The images are from the notorious state institute Mogilino pictured in the BBC4 documentary Bulgaria's Agandoned Children.
Warning: most viewers find the content of this video very disturbing.