Criminal charges after Piatra Neamț tragedy
Romanian prosecutors file criminal charges after investigating fire in a hospital
Eugen Coroianu, 29.10.2021, 13:50
The General Prosecutor’s Office
brought formal charges against 10 people, 6 of them successive interim managers
of the hospital in Piatra Neamţ (north-eastern Romania) which burned down last
year, killing 10 Covid patients.
The tragedy took place at the
intensive care unit of the Emergency County Hospital, where 17 patients had
been admitted in 2 wards. An anaesthetist who went into one of the burning wards
trying to rescue patients suffered severe burns and had to be transferred to
Brussels.
The charges include manslaughter,
bodily harm out of negligence, aggravated destruction out of negligence, and
failure to observe workplace security and protection rules.
Agerpres news agency reports that 2
nurses have been accused of leaving an open fire source unattended, while the
head of the intensive care unit is accused of having failed to take measures to
ensure ventilation. The ICU chief is also accused of having forged a memo
regarding the care provided to patients, jointly with another physician.
Legal action was also brought
against the hospital itself. Prosecutors argue that after the pandemic was
declared and the hospital was turned into a COVID support unit, the hospital
management failed to organise hospital activity properly. Specifically, the
management did not review workplace health and security risks after the amount
of oxygen administered to patients in that unit was increased, and implicitly
the oxygen concentration in the 2 wards rose. The defendants also failed to
introduce prevention measures to ensure workplace security under the new
circumstances.
The investigation revealed that the 2
nurses on duty at the time, who were attending patients under oxygen therapy, left
a lit candle unattended. This was the original source of the fire that burned
the intensive care unit.
Similar tragedies have also taken
place this year in Bucharest and Constanța (south-east). (tr. A.M. Popescu)
