The Health Care System Is A Matter Of National Security

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 Romania’s 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 patients’ health.

The human and professional value of the medical staff that works in these hospitals saves the day and the patients’ lives. Though, it may be that a patient’s 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 doctors’ salaries, and medicine paid with the patients’ money.

I do believe that Basescu, as head of state, had all the right to undergo surgery in Vienna. His life and future mobility were in danger. Health minister Eugen Nicolaescu said the health of the president was a matter of national security. Indeed, this is true, and one of the few decent things Nicolaescu managed to say these days, among so many blunders he made.

What revolts me is that millions of Romanians do not have the money to get treatment in Vienna, and yet the same minister of health tells us all is well in the Romanian health care system.

Another worrying issue, this time for Romania’s Secret Service, or SPP, is that the country seems to not have the medical facilities able to provide emergency top-level surgery for a president - any visiting president or high-ranking official, for that matter.

The SPP is entirely responsible for the life and integrity of visiting officials. What if one of them would need life-saving emergency surgery, let’s say to be performed within one hour tops - what then? Where would that man or woman be operated on?

Therefore, I think it is high time for the SPP to start saving on luxury cars and put its money and brains into finding a solution. The Central Military Hospital in Bucharest might be a platform to start from, as the hospital already has the capacity to enforce security measures, and the funding from the Ministry of Defense, which commands an over one billion euros budget a year and has all the air-lifting capacities.

So, taking care of our president, and giving visiting presidents a top-level medical treatment is a matter worth looking into as one pertaining to our national security too.

Translated by Anca Paduraru