A weak and frail health-care system
The tragedy that hit a maternity hospital in Bucharest, following an explosion in the intensive care unit that killed several babies, has added more fuel to an old debate regarding the Romanian health-care system.
19 August 2010, 19:43
The debate is raging although the cause of the tragedy was an accident, triggered by a common short-circuit of the air conditioning unit.
Prosecutors have already ordered an investigation into the case and will surely track down the guilty parties.
However, the generic diagnosis had long been given: the Romanian health-care system is an ailing one.
If somewhat of a cliché, this description best fits reality. For two decades, along with the education system, the local health-care has been constantly under financed.
Its deep wounds let us see through the indifference and lack of responsibility that sometimes may prove lethal, as was the case on Monday.
Successive health-care reforms have never been completed, and young physicians are now trying to escape the system, in search of better incomes in the West.
The country’s protracted economic recession has only compounded old flaws
Dramatic cuts in spending on procurements and salaries have driven hospitals and clinics into degradation, while inpatients have no choice but to buy the required medicines and related products themselves. With very low salaries, doctors are widely suspected of refusing to treat patients if bribes (now a long-standing tradition) are not given them.
7 out of 10 health-care employees consider emigrating and working in other EU states, which lack personnel and where job prospects are more luring.
Estimations made by the Romanian Physicians’ College show that more than 50% of doctors will leave the country by 2015, drawn by higher salaries and better working conditions.
The most sought after doctors are anesthetists, surgeons, cardiologists, and heart surgery specialists, mostly in Germany and the UK.
The future looms dark, Jurnalul National daily paper writes, if we consider the endless humiliation that doctors have been subjected to - salary cuts, bonus reduction, and a poor medical training.
The Physicians’ College warns that, if emigration continues, in 3 or 4 years’ time, we will not be able to provide patient treatment by European standards.
(Radio România Internaţional, Serviciul în limba engleză).
