The General-Prosecutor's Office will probe all homes for disabled children in Bulgaria in the wake of information provided by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) regarding increased children's mortality rates, Bulgarian-language Dnevnik daily said on March 10 2010.

According to the BHC, an independent non-governmental organisation concerned with the protection of human rights, half of the 20 institutions in question had recorded increased mortality rates.

"We will make an analysis of the current state of these homes and if we find any sign of violations and crimes we will prosecute those responsible for it," Dnevnik quoted Deputy Prosecutor-General Galina Toneva as saying.

To this end, groups of prosecutors, BHC experts, pediatricians, psychiatrists, health inspectors and city halls experts will be formed.

Results should be ready within the next two months, Toneva said, noting that all of the homes will be checked, not just those identified by the BHC as high risk.

Toneva's comment comes three weeks after the BHC said it had launched legal actions against the General-Prosecutor's Office over its refusal to investigate 75 child mortality cases between 2000 and 2008 in children's institutions.

BHC lawyer Margarita Ilieva was quoted by Bulgarian Cross news agency as saying that, if the children had died outside the boundaries of the respective institutions, prosecutors would have filed cases. Hence the BHC considers prosecutors' refusal to investigate the 75 deaths to be discriminatory.

The first court session on the case was on February 11 2010.