Radio România Internațional

Tag: PHYSICIANS

  • Corruption cases in Romania

    Corruption cases in Romania

    The news about the corruption case involving Dumitru Buzatu, one of the oldest and most influential leaders of the Social Democratic Party (in the ruling coalition), has been making the headlines in Romania. A member of Parliament from 1992 until 2012, when he was still elected president of the Vaslui County Council (one of the poorest counties in Romania), Dumitru Buzatu has gathered an impressive fortune, according to his latest wealth declaration which covers 4 pages. Among other things, he owns or is a co-owner of 10 agricultural, forestry or rural lands and five buildings. The agricultural and forest lands exceed 130 hectares. On Friday evening, he was caught by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate-DNA prosecutors with a bribe of 1.25 million lei (about 250 thousand Euros), money received from a businessman, Emil Savin, for favoring his company to obtain a contract for road rehabilitation works. In the report through which the DNA requested the court to arrest Buzatu, the businessman told the prosecutors that the president of the Vaslui County Council used to claim a percentage of at least 10% of the value of the works he entrusted to various contractors.



    The businessman also claims that, for several years, he felt persecuted by Dumitru Buzatu, who allegedly contacted him several times in the last months and promised him that he would get involved in the dispute that Emil Savin’s company had it with the Vaslui County Council. The dispute was about a sum of money for the works done, outstanding payments in the last two years. The problems with the payment of the invoices had emerged as a result of misunderstandings regarding the bribe that the county council president was going to receive for having favored that company to obtain the contract. Following the evidence presented by the DNA prosecutors, on Saturday, the Vaslui Court decided on the preventive arrest for 30 days of Dumitru Buzatu, who was quickly excluded from the Social Democratic Party in the meantime, following this case.



    In the same case, a technical expert was also arrested for bribe taking and influence peddling. The expert allegedly demanded over 700,000 lei (about 140 thousand Euros) from the representative of the construction company with which the Vaslui County Council had signed a contract for the rehabilitation of some roads with European funds. In exchange for the money, he was to draft an expert’s report favorable to the respective company and to intervene with the decision-makers so that they pay the invoices for the works done, worth about three million Euros.



    In another case of corruption, this time in Bucharest, two physicians from the Marius Nasta Institute of Pneumo-Phthisiology were preventively arrested, last week, on charges of taking bribes from patients. Six other physicians were placed under judicial supervision, to be investigated in a state of freedom. The College of Physicians in Bucharest strongly condemns their gesture and distances itself from the cases of corruption in the health system, saying that it is not natural to blame all the physicians for what happens in isolated cases. (LS)

  • Romania in need of physicians

    Romania in need of physicians

    The life expectancy rate in Romania is among the lowest in Europe, and the COVID-19 pandemic has erased part of the growth recorded since 2000. According to a European Commission report on health in Romania, carried out last year, the pandemic highlighted the importance of strengthening primary medical care, preventive health and public health services in a system that depends, to a large extent, on hospital services. The health minister Alexandru Rafila has recently acknowledged that over 15,000 physicians have left Romania in recent years alone for better salaries in other countries. Thus, Romania is facing a crisis of specialists in anesthesia, intensive care, epidemiology, pediatrics, laboratory medicine and microbiology. And, unlike other European states, Romania has one doctor per about 200 inhabitants, far below the European average, due to faulty public health policies.



    The situation is much worse in rural areas, where a doctor sees eight times more patients. Moreover, a recent analysis shows that family medicine in Romania could face big problems in the not too distant future. The massive aging phenomenon observed in this category of doctors could have major consequences in the next ten years, the experts in the field warn. And the health minister admitted that, at present, there is a national crisis of doctors for certain specialties, including those of emergency medicine and family medicine. As far as primary medical care is concerned, the medical corps is aging, and hundreds of localities do not have a doctor.



    Here is the health minister Alexandru Rafila: “This is a national phenomenon. There are specialists that work in critical units such as emergency rooms, ambulance services, and primary medical assistance. Despite the apparently large number of family doctors, namely 11,000, hundreds of localities in Romania do not benefit from primary medical care, and the medical staff is aging, with an average age of over 55 years.”



    According to the health minister, the shortage of medical personnel with higher education studies cannot be covered in the short term, but the problem could be solved in the future by implementing a human resources strategy in health, that should be developed for the first time in Romania. The strategy would be a partnership with the universities of medicine and pharmacy. Meanwhile, in Romania, the number of Covid-19 cases and implicitly the number of patients in hospitals have started to rise again. The authorities announce that they are working on the necessary legislation for opening COVID vaccination centers within the health facilities. This is a preparation measure for the autumn vaccination campaign, when a new vaccine is expected, adapted to the new variants of the Omicron strain. (LS)

  • 7.5 million Romanians, fully vaccinated

    7.5 million Romanians, fully vaccinated

    Since the start of
    the vaccine roll-out on December 27, last year, nearly 7.8 million people have received
    one of the 4 anti-Covid vaccines-Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and
    Johnson&Johnson, and 7.5 million of them are now fully vaccinated.


    The number of COVID
    19 cases is on the decrease, but authorities are once again calling for
    vaccination and compliance with protection measures, while the introduction of the
    compulsory COVID certificate before New Year’s is rather unlikely.


    The head of the
    Department for Emergency Situations, Raed Arafat, said that mobile vaccination
    centres will be organised in rural areas in the forthcoming period. He also
    added that the vaccine is the ‘best solution’ to prevent severe forms of the
    disease.


    Romanian hospitals
    are seeing the lowest number of COVID-19 patients since the start of the 4th
    wave, with around 900 patients in intensive care.


    The health minister
    Alexandru Rafila has recently talked with representatives of family
    physician associations. According to
    him, one of the main emergencies at the moment is developing the testing
    capacity in family physician practices, as well as improving the assessment and
    treatment of milder forms of the disease. Funds will be earmarked to this end,
    so that patients need not incur additional costs. For confirmed coronavirus
    cases, family physicians will be able to prescribe anti-viral medication:


    Alexandru Rafila: The refund
    package for testing covers the testing as such and the protection materials for
    healthcare personnel. Apart from that, for confirmed cases the option of a
    minimal funding package will be available, allowing for investigations and the
    prescription of outpatient anti-viral treatment, which obviously will be protective
    for patients and healthcare STAFF, so as to make sure that anti-viral treatment
    is only given after prior assessment of the patients.


    At EU
    level, Brussels is considering the introduction of compulsory COVID-19
    vaccination requirements, as the new variant, Omicron, keeps spreading. Austria has
    announced vaccination will be mandatory as of February 1, and it is the first
    country in Western Europe and one of the few in the world to take this step. Germany
    is also considering making vaccination mandatory, with Parliament to make a
    decision in this respect by year end. In turn, Greece announced this measure will
    be introduced for citizens over 60 years of age, and similar ideas are taken
    into account in other EU member states as well. (tr. A.M. Popescu)

  • The early days of medicine in Romanian Principalities

    The early days of medicine in Romanian Principalities

  • Children are also affected by the Covid-19 pandemic

    Children are also affected by the Covid-19 pandemic

    Since the onset of the pandemic, a year
    ago, over 120 million people have been infected with the novel coronavirus. As
    expected the virus gradually made its way to children and although they seem to
    be the least affected category in terms of infection, SARS-CoV-2 can pose a
    real threat to children suffering from a series of illnesses and who have low
    immunity.




    The virus can create severe symptoms or
    complications in young children suffering from diseases. According to Diana
    Ionescu, medical director with the Victor Gomoiu Children Hospital in
    Bucharest, the facility is functioning at full capacity.




    Diana Ionescu: We have 7
    beds approved all occupied with patients plus the buffer wards full of presumably
    infected children waiting for the results of their tests. Some of these have already
    tested positive and we are trying to finds new beds for them or to transfer these
    little patients. The less severe cases or children who have been treated for
    the past 48 hours and whose condition is stable now can go home. Only the
    severe cases remain in the Covid treatment wards. There are mainly less severe
    cases which can be treated at home. However, we have lately witnessed an
    increasing number of medium to severe cases in the little ones.

    According to Diana
    Ionescu, it is extremely important that family physicians should be immediately
    consulted after a child has presented symptoms of infection, namely respiratory
    or digestive issues. Children presenting such symptoms must be tested and
    treated as soon as possible. Some of the symptoms are fever, coughing,
    diarrhea, vomiting, digestive issues, sore throat and headaches. Other symptoms
    in children may be fatigue, muscle pain and in most severe cases pneumonia or
    acute respiratory failure. The Covid-19 can shortly change the life of a child.
    The situations affecting families, friendships, the daily routine and the
    community at large can have consequences upon the development, wellbeing and
    protection of children.




    Concurrently, quarantine and isolation
    measures, the closed schools and various travel restrictions are breaking their
    routine and social support putting more pressure on parents who are forced to
    look for alternative solutions. According to studies, anxiety, stress and
    uncertainties are strongly affecting children of all ages rendering them more
    vulnerable to violence and psychological pressure. Although they have
    mechanisms to cope with these emotions, children are in need of love and
    support from their parents because they are the main providers of safety and
    comfort to their children.


    (bill)

  • Problems in public healthcare

    Problems in public healthcare

    Officials from the National Health Insurance Agency (CNAS) and the experts in charge with the maintenance of the integrated health card management system have met to discuss the problems experienced by the platform over the past few weeks, when the system has crashed repeatedly.



    Since July 10th, most healthcare services, including the dispensing of medicines and medical devices, have been registered offline. As a result, many family physicians have been unable to get the services they provided validated in the system, which they are required to do within 72 hours. Many doctors have to come in during the night to validate the documents, hoping that at night time the system is less busy and less likely to break down. It is also during the night that they try, and with any luck manage to, file their compulsory monthly reports to the Health Insurance Agency.



    The digital platform designed to link healthcare providers (i.e. family physicians) to patients and the insurer (CNAS) is “in full collapse, physicians warn, because many vital components of the system have been left without maintenance.



    In an attempt to find a solution, the Healthcare Minister Sorina Pintea announced that emergency procurement procedures would be initiated, to purchase maintenance services. The system was restarted on Monday, but it only worked for several hours. This time around, users found that the database was down and could not be accessed. Sorina Pintea accused the CNAS of failing to initiate the procurement procedure in time:



    Sorina Pintea: “What I find the most disturbing is that components of the digital platform of the National Health Insurance Agency were left without maintenance, although they are vital to the operation of the system. The law is very clear in this respect. There was no database maintenance. So at the moment we cannot even check whether someone is insured or not. When a healthcare service is reported, if we dont have this component up and running, the service cannot be validated and therefore its cost cannot be disbursed. And this is precisely why we had this system in the first place.



    Sorina Pintea added that as soon as an inspection is conducted at the National Health Insurance Agency and a report is finalized, the document will be sent to the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, because the law has certainly been breached. In recent years, physicians and patients have requested repeatedly that these problems be solved, and yet nothing happened. The implementation of the integrated health card management system is a project for which the Romanian state paid 21 million euros.


    (translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)

  • The shortage of physicians and public healthcare

    The shortage of physicians and public healthcare


    The Romanian healthcare system has such vulnerable points as the way patients are treated, Romania ranking among the last countries in terms of the patients’ rights and information, access to treatment, services provided and prevention.




    However, patients can express their views in various surveys, objective data being thus completed by subjective impressions. One such survey was conducted by the Coalition of the Organizations of Patients with Chronic Diseases in Romania. Luminita Valcea, a member of the coalition, tells us about the patients’ main dissatisfactions:




    Luminita Valcea “According to our survey, which involved some 300 patients, one of three patients was diagnosed in more than 6 months or even after one year. A quarter of our respondents say that there is no specialized physician, who can treat or monitor their disease in the town where they live. One of three patients has not received detailed explanations from the doctor after he was diagnosed. The survey also shows that one in five patients did not understand the doctor’s explanations. In most of the cases, the doctor just told them the treatment, without mentioning alternatives.”



    The patient-doctor relationship is confronted not only with communication problems. The patient’s integrated treatment is missing and also missing are specialists, as Luminita Valcea points out.




    Luminita Valcea “As far as chronic patients are concerned, we don’t talk only about the first diagnosis or the diagnosis for their main disease because chronic patients can also develop collateral ailments. That triggers additional problems, because the treatment of a certain disease can be contraindicated for other diseases. There is no system where the patient should be regarded as a whole with all his or her diseases and get an adequate treatment for all of them. It’s true, a lot of physicians have left the country and so have a lot of nurses. Moreover, the number of specialists has dropped dramatically.”



    According to the National Institute of Statistics, some 15,700 Romanian physicians work abroad. Can the shortage of physicians be an explanation for the Romanian healthcare system as highlighted by the Euro Health Consumer Index? Stefan Voinea, a member of the team working on a project of the NGO the Romanian Health Observer explains.




    Stefan Voinea: “There is a clear-cut connection between the de-professionalization of the Romanian healthcare system, the great number of physicians who leave, and the situation we’re in at the moment. There is this brain drain phenomenon, and we are currently facing a situation in which the system barely survives being largely based on resident physicians who do way too many on-call shifts. And so it happens that the remaining physicians get more and more exhausted. Mix that with the poor wages in the system and the lack of a strategic vision regarding human resources, and you’ll see why we’ve ended up in this situation.”




    It is not only the low incomes, mainly those of the medical doctors who are at the beginning of their career, that explain the aforementioned brain drain. Technical facilities in German or French hospitals as well as the lack of professional promotion opportunities in Romania are also to blame for the situation. Speaking about that, here is Stefan Voinea once again.




    Stefan Voinea: “The promotion system is so closed up; there are castes and insider groups that are prompting many young doctors to leave because they feel they cannot penetrate the system. There are many people who, because they lack the required connections, are unable to get a job. Furthermore, a hospital manager told me that, although he did have the available jobs for medical doctors, he wasn’t going to put them up for a competitive exam as certain people in the local administration would fight him, since each of them had their own favorite candidate for those positions.”



    Despite the fact that the aforementioned problems have been exposed, patients declared themselves satisfied with the treatment they got in Romanian hospitals, According to the satisfaction questionnaires dispatched by the Healthcare Ministry and electronically filled in by more than 120,000 patients, the general satisfaction rate as regards the medical services offered by hospitals stood at 79.8%. Patients in Romania may have low expectations and the satisfaction of having survived and recovered from illnesses could influence their perception of the system, experts with the Romanian Healthcare Observer believe.



    The aforementioned questionnaires may also contain not-so-pleasing information. In some cases the medical staff have allegedly demanded money or gifts from more than 4,000 patients, accounting for 3.92 per cent of the total number of respondents. Here is Stefan Voinea once again.



    Stefan Voinea: ”In such a case, it is of crucial importance to make a distinction between informal payments, which the physicians do not demand and which unfortunately have become customary in the Romanian medical system, and the conditioning of the medical act. So in this case, to me, those more than 4,000 patients are in no way a small number, since it appears that there are more than 4,000 cases in which the medical act seems to have been conditioned. And that is something very serious.”




    In order to secure a better knowledge of the patients’ opinions, experts recommended the Ministry that the present mechanism of fathoming the patients’ degree of satisfaction after a consultation session with their family physician be extended.


  • Romania’s Struggle with Epidemics

    Romania’s Struggle with Epidemics

    The number of measles cases in Romania is on the rise, according to the latest figures released by the authorities, announcing 126 new cases lately, and almost 40 deaths throughout the season. Most cases were in eastern Romania, in the counties of Iasi, Suceava, Bacau, and Vaslui. The authorities are once again calling on the population to get measles shots. Here is physician Luminita Costache with more on the issue.



    Luminita Costache: “With this measles epidemic, we can see at any time that we could be facing diseases we thought were all but forgotten. They have not been eradicated, the germs that cause them are still in circulation, but we do have methods, such as vaccination, that are able to prevent these diseases.”



    Unfortunately, physicians say that a large number of people still dont fully comprehend the importance of immunization, for measles and flu alike. The official number of deaths caused by the flu is now higher than last year, when 21 people succumbed to it. The highest number of fatalities caused by the virus were in Iasi county, northeastern Romania.



    Several hospitals around the country have put a quarantine in place, restricting access to infectious disease wards. Health Minister Sorina Pintea believes that this does not warrant a label of epidemic, but should rather be called an intense circulation of the virus, in a season when such an occurrence is expected. Doctors recommend going to the hospital if flu symptoms manifest. Family physician Daciana Toma provides details.



    Daciana Toma: “If a head cold makes you feel unwell, a flu brings you down completely, your entire body is affected. A head cold may give you a runny nose or a sore throat. A flu makes you sick overall, with high fever, muscle pains, heavy sweating, and tremors. The flu is hard to be confused with some other ailment. We should wash hands often, and even wear a surgical mask if we have it. When you see your child affected by this, it is better to not take them to school, into the community, because you run the risk of making everyone else sick.”



    According to doctors, the flu vaccine is the most effective way of prevention. They recommend it highly to age brackets at high risk, children and the elderly, as well as people with serious conditions. They also recommend washing hands often and avoiding crowded spaces, where the flu spreads very easily by sneezing or coughing.


  • Measures benefitting teaching and healthcare staff

    Measures benefitting teaching and healthcare staff

    After its EU accession in 2007, Romanias healthcare staff, like many other categories, were given the green light to leave the country, thanks to the right to free movement in the EU. Be they physicians or nurses, they all chose to go to Western Europes richer countries such as France, Germany and Great Britain, where their professional status was recognized and respected.



    Expenses with the medical system per capita vary a lot among EU member states, so it was only natural for healthcare staff to choose those countries that channel more money to the system. Thus, between 2009 and 2015, Romania lost half of its physicians. More than 4,000 Romanian doctors are working in France and almost the same number in Germany. Adding to them are over 3,000 working in Great Britain, about 600 working in Belgium and as many as 800 working in Italy and Spain.



    Romanias teaching staff is another professional category with low salaries, which makes teaching an unattractive job for many young people, including those who have a calling for this profession and are very proficient. Romanias education system in general has been faced with an acute personnel shortage, as the teachers and prospective teachers are leaving the country or are reconverting, choosing to work in the private sector where they get better paid. In recent years, the political parties that have been successively in power have tried, and failed, to fix the problem: they promised pay rises and professional and logistic facilities.



    This week the Romanian Senate has passed an amendment to a law under which doctors and teachers will be allowed, even after turning 35, to file applications for having a house built by the National Housing Agency subordinated to the Ministry for Regional Development, Public Administration and European Funds. The Liberal Senator Marcel Vela explains:



    Marcel Vela: “The Romanian state is investing huge amounts of money in the education and training of young medical students, and if Parliament does not help them to find a job in their sector more easily, these resident doctors are tempted to go abroad to find professional fulfilment.



    Ecaterina Andronescu, a former education minister, currently a Social Democrat Senator, has also pleaded the cause of the teaching staff:



    Ecaterina Andronescu: “I dare ask you to agree with our proposal to extend the amendment to the law under discussion, by also including the teaching staff alongside resident and specialist physicians. Teachers are a very important category in all communities.



    The amendment has been passed with unanimity of votes and forwarded to the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making body on this matter.


    (translated by: Lacramioara Simion)

  • 9 August, 2016

    9 August, 2016

    ROYAL FUNERAL — The remains of Queen Anne of Romania were brought today to the country. The funeral will be held on Saturday in Curtea de Arges, the burial place for Romanian royalty. She passed away on August 1st in Switzerland, aged 92, after a battle with cancer. King Michael will not be able to attend the solemn ceremony due to ill health. You can listen to details after the news.



    PHYSICIANS — Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu and Labor Minister Dragos Paslaru, meeting with representatives of physicians, have signed a joint declaration stating that the raise in pay for overtime night shifts starting on October 1st is a step forward towards normalizing wages in the healthcare sector. The Minister of Health said that this was a fix in the system of payments, increasing efficiency in the sector. The impact on the healthcare budget will be 100 million lei (about 22 million Euro), bundled with additional measures to reduce waste and boost efficiency in the system. These decisions come after a blanket 10% raise in state employee wages, valid August 1st. The raise are between 300 lei, around 70 Euro, and 900 lei, around 200 Euro, benefiting 163,000 people.



    ERDOGAN — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in Sankt Petersburg today, holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He previously said that he wants to restart relations with Moscow. There was a serious breach in relations between the two countries last year, when the Turkish military downed a Russian military aircraft on the border with Syria. This is the first visit abroad by the Turkish leader after the attempted coup last month. It comes against the backdrop of cooling relations with western countries, which criticize the crackdown on a large number of people allegedly involved in the failed coup.



    OLYMPICS — Romanian athletes continue to compete in the 31st edition of the Summer Olympic Games in Rio, in Brazil, in rowing, swimming, and tennis. On Monday, Romanias womens handball team was crushed by Brazil 13-26, after another surprising loss against Angola, 19-23. Olympic silver medalist in judo in London Corina Caprioriu, had two opportunities to win a medal in the 57 kg category, but was unsuccessful. Also on Monday, the coxed eight team came in third, while the tennis pair Horia Tecau and Florin Mergea are one game away from the semifinals. In gymnastics, Catalina Ponor qualified for the finals in the beam event, while 35 year-old Marian Dragulescu goes to the finals in the vault event. Adrian Munteanu will be present in the parallel bars event. Romania has in Rio 96 athletes and 7 reserves.



    ANONIMUL — South Korean director Park Chan-wook was granted on Monday the Anonimul Trophy for contributions to world cinema, at the opening of the festival that takes place by the end of the week in Sfantu Gheorghe in the Danube Delta. The famous director talked about Romanian culture and the beauty of the country. The first feature length movie screened at the festival was Park Chan-wooks latest film, The Handmaiden. Romanian movies featured prominently at the festival, with award winning productions such as Sieranevada by Cristi Puiu, and Dogs, by Bogdan Mirica.



    POLL — 77% of Romanians would vote to stay in the European Union, were a referendum to be held, according to an IRES poll run between July 13-15. The same poll revealed that 74% of respondents believe that Romania is on the wrong path, while 65% of them believe the Brexit will have a negative impact on Romania. 93% of respondents believe that Romania has to show commitment to the fundamental values and principles of the European Union.