Founder of "cytostatic network" becomes Romania's Health Minister

A young Romanian who has founded a network that has been helping cancer patients in Romania source their cytostatic drugs from abroad will become the country's Health Minister. This comes after the former minister resigned amid a large scale scandal involving diluted disinfectants used in all hospitals. President Klaus Iohannis signed on Friday, May 20, the decree appointing Vlad Voiculescu as the new Health Minister in the Government led by Dacian Ciolos. Ciolos proposed Vlad Voiculescu for this position on Thursday. He said that he took the risk of appointing a person who came from outside the healthcare system, but who understood the situation. Voiculescu, who was the chief of staff within the Finance Ministry, is an economist with a 14-year work experience in Vienna. He has become acquainted with the medical system in the last years as a representative of the civil society. In 2008, while in Vienna, he initiated the “Cytostatics’ network” - a group of people who have been bringing difficult-to-find cancer drugs to patients in Romania, for free. His initiative has attracted over 400 Romanians living abroad, their relatives, and simple tourists, who have been buying cancer drugs from Austrian and Hungary and brought them to Romania. Young Romanian director Claudiu Mitcu even made a documentary based on this story, which is called "The Network", following a journalistic investigation by Vlad Mixich. Vlad Voiculescu is also the founder of MagiCAMP – a special camp for children with cancer, as well as a board member of ARIL – the Romanian Association Against Leukemia. Voiculescu has also been running an information platform raising awareness on the shortages of cancer drugs in Romania. Voiculescu will take over the Health Ministry in a very difficult period for the Romanian health sector, which is strongly affected by the disinfectants scandal. Patriciu Achimas-Cadariu resigned from this position on May 9, because he didn’t agree with the way the Government decided to manage the hospital disinfectants crisis. The health minister’s resignation was the fourth change in Dacian Ciolos’ Government of technocrats. Ana Costea resigned from the position of labor minister in mid-April this year, after controversies on the new law on wages in the public sector. Dragos Pislaru is the new labor minister. The second change came just ten days later when the European funds minister Ana Raducu also handed in her resignation.