Halfway down the Danube

Romanian hospitals revisited

Ploiesti is a city in Wallachia. It has a population of 254,000, oil fields, four train stations and a McDonalds. Whatever you plan to do in Ploiesti, it better not involve the maternity ward of the local hospital.

Apparently it all began with an eerie series of 18 dead babies between December 2003 and January 2004. Although hospital officials tried to explain this high number with the fact that many of those babies were premature, it was found that the newborns had actually died from bacterial infections. The culprits are called Klebsiella and Acinetobacter -- nothing you want to find in a hospital, let along in a newborn section.

Prosecutor Dan Ghita, who is investigating the deaths, unveiled what the Press Review called "a true nightmare" at the maternity ward - negligence, poor hygienic conditions, criminal activities.

He found out that of 68 babies who have died at the clinic, 23 have been incinerated without any documents, 11 have been returned to their families for burials, in six cases there is no documentation of whatsoever action. Some of these babies are believed to have been trafficked. Others may have died from infections or poor care. We might never know.

But this was not the last of it.

In January, two families were asked to pick up the babies they had "abandoned" four months earlier at the maternity ward. It turns out that the families had been told that their babies had died. Now those babies turned up alive and well. One family requested DNA testing because they can't believe their child is alive. The other family took their baby home.

As far as I know, the director of the clinic has resigned this week. 65 doctors and nurses are being prosecuted.

My friends from the infant orphanage here in Bucharest are distraught. "We need people to help us but when they hear such stories, international money will stop coming in. It's the worst publicity one can imagine."

Right he is.

Posted by claudia at January 28, 2004 02:56 PM | TrackBack