Protests in Romania because of plans to privatize healthcare

[Murazor]

BBC News

Romania protests: PM Emil Boc calls for dialogue
A protester throws stones at police in Bucharest. Photo: 15 January 2012 Main clashes took place near Bucharest's University Square
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Several hurt in Bucharest clashes
Big protest against Romania cuts
Romanian health care on verge of collapse

Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc has called for dialogue and an end to violence after four days of protests against austerity cuts.

Dozens of people were hurt on Sunday, as demonstrators and riot police clashed for a second day running in the capital Bucharest.

The rallies began in support of an official who quit in protest against health care reforms.

But they have grown into a broader hostility towards government policies.

The alliance of opposition parties has called for early elections.
Unlikely catalyst

More than 1,000 demonstrators rallied in University Square in the centre of Bucharest on Sunday, the scene of violence the night before.

Demonstrators threw stones at riot police, who again responded by firing tear gas.

A number of people were arrested, with officials saying that most of the trouble makers were young football fans.

Peaceful protests were reported in a number of towns and cities across the country on Sunday, including Cluj, Timisoara, Brasov and Arad, as demonstrators called for the resignation of the government and of President Traian Basescu.

Dozens of demonstrators were also said to have gathered in the centre of the capital on Monday.
Raed Arafat. Photo: 2011 Raed Arafat resigned as deputy health minister last Tuesday

The government called an emergency meeting after Sunday night's clashes.

Speaking on Monday, Prime Minister Emil Boc expressed sympathy with those struggling under austerity measures.

"The crisis has been harsher than we imagined," he said, but added that the violence "cannot be tolerated".

The protests follow cuts to salaries, benefits and higher taxes but the unlikely catalyst was the resignation of popular health official Raed Arafat.

The Palestinian-born doctor came to Romania in the 1980s, and is a well-known and much-liked figure, due to the practical changes he made to improve the emergency services, the BBC's Nick Thorpe reports.

Dr Arafat stepped down as Health Ministry undersecretary last Tuesday, after a series of public attacks on him by President Traian Basescu, our correspondent adds.

Dr Arafat opposed government measures to partially privatise Romania's shaky health care system.

President Basescu later announced that he was scrapping the unpopular reform, but that has failed to soothe the demonstrators' anger, our correspondent says.

Don't forget to check related stories for additional insights into this rather volatile situation, which has been largely ignored by international media.

[madd0ct0r]

could you link us to the related stories?
as you said - it's been largely ignored by international media.

[Murazor]

could you link us to the related stories?
as you said - it's been largely ignored by international media.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16565123
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10127366
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10914678

All those are worth reading, particularly the third (now over a year old, but still definitely worth reading) which I will now quote so that people can better understand what this is about:

Romanian healthcare on verge of collapse
By Oana Lungescu BBC Radio 4, Crossing Continents

How opera star Amelia Antoniu nearly died after a routine operation
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What it is like to have TB in Romania
Healthcare crisis in Romania

Romania spends less on healthcare than any other country in the European Union, and because of the worst recession on record, it is planning to spend even less. This chronic underfunding and a brain-drain of medical staff could be putting patients at risk.
Cristian Grigore Cristian went to hospital with a broken arm but died apparently of a severe infection caught there

In a poor village in southern Romania, the Grigore family is harvesting onions. For their only son, poverty may have been a death sentence.

Constantin Grigore chokes up when he talks about his nine-year-old son. Cristian broke his arm in May and was taken to the hospital in the nearest town, Slatina.

But four days later, he was dead, apparently of a severe infection he had caught there. The picture of a little boy with big dark eyes now hangs on the outside wall of the family's ramshackle mud-brick house.

Cristian's father said the doctors simply ignored his son. The family had to buy painkillers with their own money. Then they gave the doctor US$6, all they could afford. "If I had more money he would have returned home," Mr Grigore said. "It would have saved his life."
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Healthcare crisis in statistics

Romania spends just 3.6% of GDP on healthcare, less per capita than any other EU country
Junior doctors earn around US$400 per month
Since 2007, almost 5000 doctors, 1 in 10, have left Romania for Western Europe

This little boy's death shows just how sick Romania's healthcare system is. The management of the hospital and the doctors who treated Cristian Grigore were sacked.

Haunted

But doctor Romeo Stanculescu, the new medical director, told me: "His phantom haunts us. I think that this child was a victim of the system. But we are the system and all our failings are reflected in such cases."

Across Romania, hospitals like this are heavily in debt. Sometimes they can only afford to pay for some of the drugs or medical supplies they need. Often they run out of the most basic things, like antibiotics or stitches.

I see a poster from the nurses' union Sanitas: "We say no to 25 percent wage cuts!" In Romania, one of the poorest countries in the EU, junior doctors earn around US$400 a month - and nurses not even that. Under the government's austerity plans, those pitiful wages are being cut by a quarter.
Nicoleta and Amalia sitting on hospital bed Nicoleta and Amalia are suffering from TB

When I ask chief nurse Valentina Gheorghe how long this can carry on, she sounds fatalistic. "I don't know. God help us," she says.

Although she has worked at Slatina hospital for 28 years, she is planning to emigrate to somewhere like England or France. She says she needs to do it for the money. "I have two children, it's very hard," she says.

The man in charge is Attila Cseke. He gets a smaller budget than any other health minister in the EU - just 3.6% of GDP, less than half the share that Britain allocates, and a third of Germany's.

So does he agree that the system is on the verge of collapse? "I wouldn't describe it as a collapse, but instead as a very difficult moment - a crossroads in 2010," he says. "We must find the right turning that will lead us out of these problems."

The average time in office of a Romanian health minister is eight months. So how long will Mr Cseke last? The minister laughs. "This is actually my eigth month in the job," he says.

"But that's exactly one of the problems. In the last 20 years we've had 19 health ministers. Some ministers started something but had no time to see it through, and then a different minister with a different strategy would come along."

President treated abroad
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In July, Attila Cseke transferred control of most hospitals over to local councils. It is a controversial move, which the minister hopes will improve management and inject more cash into hospitals like the one in Slatina. Whether he will be around to see how it works out, though, is anyone's guess.

But while Romania continues to rely on the IMF to prop up its finances, there is little the minister can do to raise wages.

Since 2007, almost 5,000 doctors - 1 in 10 - have left Romania for Western Europe, where they can earn 10 times more.

Anca Surugiu, who organises medical job fairs for a PR company called Houston, said, "We are seeing doctors and nurses aged between 23 and 63 years old. I feel sad, of course, because we're losing good people. "

Even the country's leading politicians prefer to go for medical treatment abroad. Amelia Antoniu, an operetta singer who fell into a coma and almost died after a routine operation in the capital Bucharest, is scathing when she talks about the president's operation for a slipped disc in Vienna a few years ago.

"It was like a slap on our Romanian face," she said.

And what happens here can have implications across the country's borders. Romania has the highest rate of tuberculosis infection in the European Union.

In a brand-new ward at the Institute of Lung Diseases "Marius Nasta" in Bucharest, financed by UN's Global Fund, I met Nicoleta, 28, and Amalia, 19. Pale and painfully thin, both suffer from multi-drug resistant TB, which is hard to treat and extremely expensive. Doctors call it a ticking time bomb.

Doctor Adrian Mocanu, the manager of the institute, has a serious health warning. "We can do what we can do with our specialists, but we must cooperate with all the countries in the EU," he said. Romanians now travel across the continent.

And unless they fix their health system, they may export not only medical staff, but also germs. "In the moment that Romania became a part of the EU," said Dr Mocanu, "TB is not only our problem, it is a European problem."

This edition of Crossing Continents was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 12 August 2010.

[madd0ct0r]

So guy comes into failing system.

makes some improvements, gets popular, opposes President's reforms, gets publically smacked down and resigns in protest?

and why does President want to make these unpopualr reforms?

because the IMF has him in an armlock. Sorry Romania, you've been picked to be the next low human value manufacturer.

[Sea Skimmer]

They also have a flat tax policy, massive tax evasion and massive government corruption that makes it extremely difficult to do business of any kind; low and behold that government services would be poorly funded and badly run. I'm not sure but they either have the lowest or nearly lowest taxes in the EU too. I wouldn't go complaining about the IMF as long as that stays true.

[madd0ct0r]

yeah - the article did report the president as saying he'd rather cut spending then raise taxes.

I didn't know that the tax rate was already unusually low.

presumably a flat tax policy and massive tax evasion would make simply raising taxes deeply regressive? So what they need first is corruption and tax reform?

[Sea Skimmer]

Yup, and corruption reform has been a massive topic for the better part of a decade because without it they will not be allowed into the Eurozone, but by many measures progress is actually running backwards these days. The courts simply do not convict well placed people in the government and industry when they are caught, and don't have the resources to go after everyone else. I checked, taxes are second lowest in the EU at 16% flat income tax rate, the only place lower is Bulgaria which adapted a 10% flat rate and has many of the same problems. The fact is these two nations would have never been allowed into the EU normally; but they got in because of that lovely desire to unify Europe and keep the Russians out no matter the cost. Sustained corruption reform was supposed to be a condition of joining... but once they got in low and below efforts tapered off just like all the budget reforms everyone in the EU was supposed to obey got swept aside. Corruption in Romania is so bad even the church is selling its priesthoods. I wonder if child molesters from overseas have figured out they can buy those yet?

It doesn't help that even under the Warsaw Pact these two places were the poorest; and Romania had terrible relations with the Russians and an awful dictator on top of it leaving them as bad off as possible afterwards. Romania has a huge problem just with street children; its heart breaking which is not a term I would use often, but the only reason the kids don't all freeze to death is they live underground along the steam pipes huffing paint through the winter. This is a place that seems to me like it damn well needs the government overthrown like Ceaușescu before them; but even so, the economy contraction they've undergone in the last couple years is so massive they might have been forced to the IMF anyway, but on a lot better terms. They actually have very little government debt but the massive contraction shocked investors away from them.