New tragedy hits Romania’s hospitals
A fire broke out on Friday in the countrys most modern infectious disease hospital, making victims among the patients
Ştefan Stoica, 29.01.2021, 14:00
Last November, when Romania was struggling with thousands of daily new coronavirus infections, the intensive care unit of the County Emergency Hospital in Piatra Neamţ (north-east of the country) was the scene of a devastating fire that killed 10 of the hospitals patients.
In the wake of the event, Public Health Directorate teams and experts with the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations conducted inspections in all ICUs across the country, to check installations and the procedures for operating relevant medical equipment. The checks revealed that there are counties in Romania where no hospital has a fire safety permit. A public healthcare trade union warned at the time that the Piatra Neamţ tragedy may repeat itself anywhere in the country, because of the worn-out equipment and overworked personnel.
Early on Friday morning, a fire broke out in one of the buildings of the Matei Balş Infectious Disease Hospital in Bucharest, a state-of-the-art healthcare unit which has been, as the saying goes, on the frontline of the coronavirus fight. Only COVID patients with medium and severe forms of the disease are cared for in this hospital. This incident, too, made victims among the patients.
Dr. Beatrice Mahler is the head of the Marius Nasta Institute in Bucharest, one of the units that took over the patients evacuated from Matei Balş. She told Radio Romania that investments in infrastructure are vital and must come as soon as possible.
In turn, the health minister Vlad Voiculescu does not deny the need for radical changes in the public health system and for substantial investments. He says however the responsibility in such situations rests with the hospital manager.
Vlad Voiculescu: “Before talking about major changes in the healthcare system, we need managers to do their job at each level and yes, very often we need funding, which may come from multiple sources, but more often than not this is about the hospital management. We shouldnt get lost in general healthcare policy issues. Because the fact is that a building does not catch fire because of the system, but rather because some rules have not been observed and some investments have not been made, or have been made inadequately.
The former manager of the Matei Balş Institute, Adrian Streinu-Cercel, Ph.D., currently a Social Democratic Senator in opposition, vowed that the hospital has all permits in order. The building affected by the fire is an old one, but it had been revamped, including in terms of oxygen supplies, Streinu-Cercel explained.
The mass media are looking back at similar incidents occurring in hospitals, and there have been rather many of them. One of the most devastating took place in August 2010, when a fire that broke out in the intensive care ward of a maternity hospital in Bucharest killed 5 new-borns. (translated by: A.M. Popescu)
