Russian Babies Have Their Mouths Taped Shut by Yekaterinburg Hospital Staff

When Elena Kuritsyna was in Hospital No. 15 with her children, she heard muffled cries coming from a neighboring room. Shen she looked through the door, she was horrified to see a baby with plaster covering his mouth. "He could not cry or do anything, was just mumbling," she told Reuters television.

Kuritsyna went to a nurse in the ward to confront her about gagging the infant, and the nurse told her to mind her own business, saying that children were crying too loudly and distracting nurses from their work. She was eventually able to convince the nurse to remove the plaster, but a little while later the nurse did it again. Using her mobile phone, Kuritsyna filmed a baby lying in his cot with his mouth taped shut, as well as other babies with dummies taped to their mouths. All of the infants are orphans.

Prosecutors in Yekaterinburg, where Hospital No. 15 is located, have opened a criminal investigation into the allegations and have found startling evidence of ongoing abuse. Sticking plaster was evidently used more than once, allegedly because there weren’t enough staff members to deal with them. "Children in the first year of life were systematically gagged with sticking plaster to make children behave quietly." The nurse has been suspended while the investigation continues, and the head physician was reprimanded.

The incident has caused widespread outrage and intense coverage in the Russian media. Regional prosecutors are looking into whether hospital workers can be charged with child abuse or at least dereliction of duty, according to a statement posted on the prosecutor general’s website. It is unclear from the statement whether charges will be filed.

This is not the first shocking scandal to emerge from a Russian hospital. In one recent incident, a baby in southern Russia had to have her arm amputated because of a blood infection that was caused by a botched injection for a routine illness. Also, prosecutors in the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk have opened a criminal probe into a situation at a kindergarten where an employee gave children an injection to help them sleep. All or some of those babies were also orphans, according to a BBC report on the story. The worker who administered the unauthorized injections did not even have the required training and qualifications to work in the kindergarten, and should not have been there. A regional education official said that the worker has since been fired.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, health and welfare intuitions in Russia—including orphanages and hospitals—fell into disrepair due to lack of government funding. Although revenues have risen in recent years due to the rise in world oil prices, there are still many derelict and neglected welfare institutions throughout Russia, and employees working in them are paid poverty-level wages.