site.btaVazrazhdane Pledges to Provide Timely, Adequate Assistance to People with Disabilities with New Legislative Amendments

A group of MPs from Vazrazhdane submitted a bill to amend and supplement the Personal Assistance Act, the party's press centre said on Monday.

According to National Statistical Institute data, on average annually about 1,000 people with permanently reduced working capacity (a type and degree of disability exceeding 90%) find themselves in a situation of immediate need for assistance, which the State not always provides. These are people injured in accidents, severe heart attacks and strokes and other causes where healthy people or people with a lower degree of disability fall into a serious state of health and need personal assistance due to the inability to take care of themselves. In these situations, the injured person often has to wait for months to get a decision from the relevant healthcare authorities and to have their need for help determined.

"With this bill, we hope to ensure adequate and timely personal assistance for every person in this situation. If the person has already applied to the health commission for a deteriorated condition and the need for someone else's assistance, he or she should be entitled to receive such assistance as soon as a stage epicrisis from an attending physician is presented. In this way, personal assistance will be provided immediately and within the period until the decision is issued," one of the bill's sponsors, MP Georgi Georgiev, told journalists.