disabilities merely takes the form of ground-level access. A 16-year-old Iraqi, who has had both legs amputated from the lower thigh down, following a bomb attack, showed the commission his washroom facilities, which were too small and inadequate for his needs. Washing, showering and performing sterile care on his wounds became torturous for him and his mother during their 9-month stay. Moreover, he could not participate in German language courses due to lack of accessibility for persons with disabilities. During his initial contact with the commission, he complained that all the other healthy persons of his age with whom he had come to Traiskirchen had already been moved, while he and his mother were put off repeatedly. Reception Centre At the Traiskirchen Initial Reception Centre a dialysis patient in a wheelchair and his family who initially lived outdoors as homeless persons, were subsequently housed in a tent. In a physician’s assessment which the dialysis patient showed to the commission, an Upper Austrian hospital had advised against spending nights in the open. He explained that he had shown the physician’s assessment to employees of the service provider in charge of the administration of the Initial Reception Centre (ORS GmbH) several weeks earlier, to no avail and without receiving a response. Contrary to recommendations, a dialysis patient was housed in a tent Shortly after reception at the Traiskirchen Initial Reception Centre was halted, a blind Syrian asylum seeker with no companions was being housed in Tent Camp 2, where provisioning was even more precarious than in other parts of the site. At the height of summer, over 1,000 people were barely able to wash themselves and could only use the six available showers in the police college sports centre. Without help the asylum seeker was unable to reach the food distribution points and mobile toilets which had been set up. He was completely reliant on support from his fellow countrymen who were being housed with him in the tent. He described to the commission that he was worried that his fellow countrymen might be moved before he was, leaving him defenceless and reliant on completely unknown people. Blind asylum seeker with no companions on whom to rely In these and other individual cases, medical experts of Commission 6 determined that any delay would involve significant risk and issued recommendations that the individuals in question urgently needed to be moved. In view of the huge challenges involved in managing the flow of refugees, the Vienna Social Fund and the regional government of Lower Austria in particular are to thank for the fact that after the NPM made contact, accommodation that fulfilled the Basic Provision Agreement requirements was arranged, without having to separate families. In late autumn 2015, the Federal Ministry of the Interior set up a special care facility for persons with disabilities in Upper Austria. Whether this was enough and will continue to be enough is unclear, as data are not yet available regarding how many refugees with disabilities in 88