Romania gets European expert help to fight hospital infections

Romania is trying to find a better way of managing hospital-acquired infections with help from European experts. A multidisciplinary team of experts from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), together with an expert from Norway, will be in Romania this week to discuss the detection, surveillance, prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections. The visit takes place between July 4 and July 7 and includes talks with staff at the Ministry of Health, the National Institute for Public Health and other Romanian stakeholders. “This is an exploratory visit, which answers a request for support made by the Romanian Minister of Health to tackle the challenges that the country is currently facing in this area,” reads a statement of ECDC. The European experts will check the legislation and regulatory framework on hospital-acquired infections, visit hospitals in and around Bucharest, and perform semi-structured interviews and group discussions with key stakeholders. After the visit, the team will brief the Romanian Ministry of Health on their findings, propose a set of prevention actions and control activities, and outline areas where Romania could get further support from or work together with the ECDC. Healthcare-associated infections are currently a hot topic in Romania. A local journalistic investigation revealed that many of the people who died after the Colectiv club tragedy in Bucharest in late 2015 were killed by aggressive germ infections they developed in the Romanian hospitals. Journalists also showed that hundreds of local public hospitals have been buying diluted disinfectants from Hexi Pharma for many years, thus putting the patients’ lives in danger. More than 57,000 hospital-acquired infections, also known as nosocomial infections, were reported in Romania between 2010 and 2015, according to information included in a document the Ministry of Health sent to the Parliament in May. Romanian doctor drops the bomb: Patients are not safe in public hospitals! Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com