Serbia to improve lot of mentally disabled

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia will take steps to improve conditions in its long-term mental institutions and may close down some facilities following a human rights group report on mistreatment of patients, a Serb minister said on Thursday.

The report by Washington-based Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI), entitled "Torment not Treatment", said Serbian mental institutions routinely use physical restraints that are tantamount to torturing helpless patients.

Initially, the report was strongly rejected by Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, who said it was politically motivated.

But a week later, Rasim Ljajic who heads the ministry of labor and social affairs said: "There is some truth in the report.

"The allegations of poor hygienic conditions, lack of nurses and overcrowded hospitals were true," he said. "Some of these institutions will have to be closed down.

"However the allegations in the report that the state was deliberately dumping disabled children into institutions were wrong," he added.

Up to 75 percent of disabled children in such institutions in Serbia had no contact with their families, the minister said -- a reflection of Balkan society's tendency to treat mental disability as a stigma to be covered up and denied.

Social reform is one of several areas in which Serbia is called on to make substantial progress in order to advance towards eventual membership of the European Union.

(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac. Editing by Douglas Hamilton)