When Sergei Samborsky discovered his 84-year-old grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s disease and COVID-19, was being neglected in an isolation ward at an infectious diseases hospital, he knew he had to intervene.
He contacted the hospital and begged them to let him care for her himself. His grandmother, Yulia Yemelyashina, had raised him since he was a child, and the thought of her not being properly cared for was devastating.
But the hospital refused Samborsky’s request, saying she was located in a restricted ‘red zone’ due to her COVID-19 infection.
Desperate, Samborsky decided he had to take matters into his own hands.
In a wood outside the hospital, he put on a suit of protective clothing, and simply walked into the Tomsk hospital through the front door, taking with him adult diapers, dressings for bedsores and nutrition that could be administered intravenously.
Samborsky found his way to his grandmother’s room. When asked, he said he was a doctor.
The scene he discovered when he located his grandmother was deeply distressing.
“My grandmother was lying in a puddle of urine and faeces. There was vomit in her mouth and her oxygen mask was on her forehead,” he told Radio Free Europe.
Samborsky continued to visit his grandmother for three days and filmed the whole thing.
But eventually his ruse was discovered and he was ejected from the hospital
Inexplicably, a few days later, Samborsky was asked to move his grandmother to a different hospital, despite the fact she was still being treated for pneumonia and had a high fever.
Yemelyashina’s condition continued to deteriorate, and she was eventually taken to intensive care and placed on a ventilator. She died later that day of “coronavirus infection, pneumonia, [and] acute heart and lung failure,” according to the hospital report, RFA has reported.
Samborsky posted a harrowing video of his experiences on social media. The film shows his grandmother in bed unconscious, covered in bruises, her diapers unchanged, with untreated pressure wounds, and lying on a urine-soaked mattress.
The footage has been viewed thousands of times all over the world.
**CONTENT WARNING – SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND THE CONTENT OF THIS VIDEO DISTRESSING**
Sadly, Yemelyashina’s death was not the end of Samborsky’s problems.
The hospital was already shrouded in scandal following mismanagement of its COVID-19 response, staffing cuts and claims of poor quality care, and Samborsky’s video and his comments in the media acted to corroborate these concerns.
“There is simply no one to work,” he told RFE. “There are no diapers, no proper bed linen, no nurses to keep track of medications. There isn’t even anyone to feed the patients.”
Samborsky continued, “My grandmother was on a liquid diet. The first day I went to her, she ate one-quarter of her norm. Two days later, she was moved to another ward where she didn’t eat at all because they didn’t feed her intravenously but liquid from a spoon, which she couldn’t take.”
He added, “It’s even possible she simply starved to death after they ‘unmasked’ me and kicked me out.”
Samborsky has been accused of trying to discredit the hospital, and there have been people asking questions about him in his hometown.
“I lost my job as a welder when my video created a scandal,” he told RFE. “They called my boss and threatened him if he didn’t fire me.”
“Now I am burying my grandmother at my own expense. In the end, I couldn’t save her.”
I am extreamly sad for your loss of your Grand mother you tried and the treatment of you is Disgusting these people should be prosecuted its Shameful. RIP grandma🙏🏼