Romania’s Ombudsman monitors hospitals for “torture and inhuman treatments”

Romania’s Ombudsman has notified local hospitals that they are being monitored for “torture and inhuman and degrading punishments and treatments,” News.ro reported.

The monitoring is meant to “strengthen patient protection.”

The Ombudsman also asked hospitals to notify patients that this monitoring is in place and has requested additional papers and statistics from every hospital.

Commenting on the news, health minister Nelu Tătaru said he failed to understand how hospitals could become places of torture and were likened to detention facilities.

“From the perspective of the professional, of the surgeon, I fail to understand how a hospital can become a torture center, how the treatment delivered is torture, how those who fought against the Covid-19 epidemic for three months and saved lives appear to undergo an investigation,” Tătaru said.

The minister also said he would consult specialists to learn if the monitoring has a legal base.

He said he did not receive any complaints about harmful treatments. “There were requests of asymptomatic [coronavirus] patients for discharge, but we did not have complaints of aggressive treatment or torture,” he said. Tătaru also explained that he saw many doctors trying to save patients “with their bare hands.”

In his turn, Raed Arafat, the head of the Emergency Service Department (DSU), explained that such monitoring could be done on account of patient rights. The Ombudsman can do this without invoking torture.

Arafat warned that, if the monitoring was not reconsidered, doctors would be reluctant to make decisions.

Both Tătaru and Arafat spoke of how the hospitals, still busy treating coronavirus patients, cannot send all the statistics the Ombudsman required.

Raluca Alexandru, an Ombudsman deputy, explained that the terms used are the ones included in the current legislation.

“We are in no way speaking of torture treatment. This is the name of the domain established through Law 35/1997. […]. With this action, we wanted to inform patients that they have the option of filling in a questionnaire in this area, on the website of the Ombudsman. By requesting the institutions to notify that they are monitored, we thought it was normal to inform the patients,” she said, quoted by News.ro.