A Healthcare Pact
The Romanian PM proposes a healthcare pact after the model of the defense pact agreed upon by all political parties at the beginning of 2015.
Valentin Țigău, 20.04.2015, 13:55
The Romanian PM Victor Ponta proposed, in a TV show on a private station, that a healthcare pact should be concluded by all political parties. The PM believes that guaranteeing constant funding for the healthcare system, improving working conditions and increasing salaries could keep medical staff in the country. He thinks solving this problem could take 4 years at the most.
Victor Ponta: “To say that starting tomorrow we will double or triple doctors’ salaries would be unrealistic. We need 2, 3 up to 4 years in which to gradually increase wages and we also need to give them the opportunity to make incomes in the private sector. If there are no good prospects for doctors, the European competition is sure to leave us without the best doctors. We therefore want to finance a healthcare program and to implement it, but for that we need the consensus of all political parties”.
Previously, the Romanian health minister Nicolae Banicioiu had said that unless salaries were substantially increased, in the following 3 years the medical field in Romania would be facing a major crisis. He added that what also caused Romanian doctors to go abroad was the lack of jobs.
Nicolae Banicioiu: “When we blocked employment in the healthcare system, all the young doctors who graduated between 2010 and 2014 had to leave to country to find a job. It’s actually us who made them leave. Not to mention the competition of the West which literally puts us at a disadvantage, since the salary of a healthcare specialist in the West can reach several thousand euros per month”.
The health minister also pointed out that since October 4,500 people have been hired in the system. This year will see more doctors being employed, to make up for the shortage of 40 thousand jobs. Besides the lack of human resources and the insufficient number of hospitals, the number of patients is on the rise. According to the health minister, 500 thousand Romanians suffer from cancer and more than 2 million have hepatitis B and C.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says in Romania there are 2.5 doctors per one thousand inhabitants, which is under the European average of 3.4. Recent data provided by the Romanian College of Physicians show that every 4 hours a Romanian doctor leaves the country to find a job abroad. As of 2007 when Romania joined the EU, until the end of 2013, more than 14 thousand doctors have left Romania.
