Winner
Robin Hammond
Freelance
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"CONDEMNED - Mental health in African countries in crisis"
his so called Rehabilitation facility outside the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt holds over 170 people with mental illness or mental disability. Run by the government, it was originally designed as a facility to assist widows, but in 1999 it was turned into a place of incarceration for homeless people with mental illness that were cleared off the streets in a ‘clean up’ in anticipation of the FIFA World Youth Soccer Championship. The photographer found a young man who had one leg amputated. His other leg was rotting. He had a catheter leading to a urine bag but he was sleeping in soaked trousers. He lay on car floor mats - an attempt to keep the urine he lay in and the liquid oozing from his leg from soaking the dirty mattress below him. Many patients were in chains. A human rights activist said that it wasn’t that the facility lacked funds but that those funds were being shared out amongst the staff rather than being spent on the care of the vulnerable people staying at the institution. The Niger Delta, Nigeria. October 2012. Photo Robin Hammond/Panos
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