The debate over how healthy is our health care system got a new jump-start with the occasion of President Traian Basescu having his herniated disc operated in Vienna, Austria, and not in Romania.
I agree with political commentator Ion Cristoiu, who said it was a political mistake to decide operating Basescu outside Romania, a decision which was subsequently also very badly handled by his press-department.
The signal sent from the highest political levels was that Romaniaâs health-care system was not to be trusted, in spite of the billions of euros it put in it every year, and of the successive reforms.
Indeed, the infrastructure and the medical equipment in our hospitals are dated. I would put the year at around 1970s. There are, of course, a few exceptions: for instance the University Hospital led by Sorin Oprescu, in Bucharest, and several others top clinics in the capital city and in the main cities around the country.
But most hospitals, in the vast majority of small towns, are dangerous to the patientsâ health.
The human and professional value of the medical staff that works in these hospitals saves the day and the patientsâ lives. Though, it may be that a patientâs life, saved by a brilliant medical doctor, was later taken away by a drug-resistant microbe tucked away in the hospital walls.
The professional value of top Romanian physicians is confirmed by the invitations they get to work abroad - which some of them do not take for reasons that might have to do with patriotism, or not. But also undeniable is the pitiful way in which physicians are relegated to work, operating in hospitals with broken windows and peeling walls filled with drug-resistant microbes, which have air-conditioning systems paid with the doctorsâ salaries, and medicine paid with the patientsâ money.
I do believe that Basescu, as head of
