Some 50 public hospitals in Romania used inefficient disinfectants

A total of 50 public hospitals in Romania, including several important hospitals in Bucharest, have been using inefficient disinfectants, the Health Ministry announced on Friday, May 6. This means that patients treated in these hospitals may have been exposed to hospital germs. The Health Ministry released the list of the 50 hospitals following public pressure, after a journalistic investigation revealed last week that hundreds of public healthcare units have been using diluted disinfectants bought from a local company called Hexi Pharma. Some of the disinfectants had only a tenth of the declared active substance concentration. The Health Ministry asked local hospitals and Public Health Department units to collect and analyze samples from the medical units to check if the disinfectants used in public hospitals were efficient in killing germs. Health minister Patriciu Achimas Cadariu declared on Wednesday that less than 5% of the collected samples turned out nonconforming. However, when asked which were the hospitals where disinfectant problems were found, the minister said he couldn’t release this information, as it was part of a criminal case investigated by the General Prosecutor’s Office. Cadariu assured the public that patients were safe in public hospitals and that the disinfectant problem was not a widespread phenomenon. His statements were contested by doctors' representatives. However, the public pressure determined the Health Ministry to publish the list of hospitals where there were problems with the disinfection process. The list includes 50 medical units out of some 290 that had been checked, which represents over 17% of the total. The list includes Bucharest’s two biggest emergency hospitals, the Floreasca Emergency Hospital and the University Emergency Hospital, and seven other hospitals from the capital. Some of these hospitals have also treated burned victims following the Colectiv tragedy in October 2015. The list also includes major hospitals from other cities, such as the emergency hospitals in Targu-Mures, Ploiesti, and Piatra Neamt, the children’s hospitals in Brasov and Galati, as well as the Oncologic Institute and the Heart Institute in Cluj-Napoca, the last of which also does transplants. The full list is available here. The Ministry said that the hospitals included in the list have stopped using the inefficient disinfectants and that all disinfectants produced by Hexi Pharma have been removed. However, many have criticized the health minister's response to the disinfectant fraud scandal, accusing him of being part of an effort to cover up the problem. When asked if he would dismiss Patriciu Achimas Cadariu from his cabinet, Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos answered that the change of one man could not solve this particular problem. "Now I'm more interested in finding solutions to the problems that have been signaled and to unveil other problems. How can you reform a system when almost each month there is a new crisis or a new scandal?" Ciolos said, according to Mediafax.