In the early hours of Friday, Romania was shaken by some
\nterrible news: a fire broke out at the intensive care unit of the Infectious
\nDiseases Hospital in Constan\u0163a, the biggest city on the Romanian Black Sea
\ncoast. The initial death toll among the ten Covid patients who were being
\ntreated there was 9, but this was later revised down to 7. Which doesn’t make
\nthis incident any less tragic. <\/p>\n
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After a fire last November at the Piatra Neam\u021b
\nhospital, when ten patients died and the doctor on duty who tried to save them
\nsuffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns on 80% of his body, the
\ngovernment launched an inquiry that revealed malfunctions with the signalling
\nand electric installations. The inquiry, which also looked at most of the
\nnational healthcare system, identified 2,000 deviations from fire security
\nregulations. It found that over a quarter of Romanian hospitals lacked fire
\nfighting water tanks, two thirds of ICUs did not comply with the minimum
\nrequired distance between beds and that half of ICUs had a staff shortage for
\non duty service. <\/p>\n
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Just a few months after Piatra Neam\u021b, another fire
\nbroke out at the flagship Matei Bal\u0219 Institute in Bucharest, killing over 20
\npeople. We can already talk about a phenomenon of hospital fires. According to
\na report published in the media, fires broke out at 10 hospitals in the last
\nyear, amid growing pressure on very old infrastructure and a growing number of
\nCovid patients needing hospital treatment. <\/p>\n
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After the latest disaster on Friday, experts were sent
\nin at the site to establish the causes of the fire. At the same time, the Constan\u0163a
\nPrefecture launched an administrative inquiry into how the fire protection and
\nsecurity measures were respected. The intensive care unit, which was completely
\ndestroyed by the fire, was taken over by the County Emergency Hospital,
\nincluding the staff. <\/p>\n
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Neighbouring Hungary offered to help take over some of
\nthe patients from Romania, if needed. However, the Romanian medical system as a
\nwhole is in need of a major overhaul. Prime minister Florin C\u00ee\u021bu spoke about
\nthe need to address all the mistakes made in the last 30 years, and president
\nKlaus Iohannis said the Romanian state failed in its fundamental mission to
\nprotect its citizens. (CM)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Romanian medical system and Romanians are in mourning over a new tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":90016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29420,29979],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-90015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-fire","tag-hospital"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n