The Minister of Health announces a series of extremely important measures already applied at the national level for millions of Romanians throughout the country, and they target a very serious problem, that of overcrowding in medical units due to respiratory viruses in children, dozens of outpatient centers being open for for the problem to be solved.
The Minister of Health also talks about another problem that he is trying to solve, preparing a ministerial order by which he intends to solve the problem of the lack of certain medicines in pharmacies in Romania, but of course it will take some time for things to return to normal .
"The assessment centers for children are in dozens of locations all over the country, and they have come into operation, some have extended hours, they offer services even on weekends, while others, depending on the available staff, have more limited hours. They started working, parents can go there with their children, we have also provided a kind of guide that can be found on the website of the ministry.
The first step that parents can take is to go to the family doctor, but if they cannot get to the family doctor, or if he recommends a more in-depth investigation that also requires radiology, because sometimes it is needed, these centers they are functional. I did this to decongest the emergency reception units.
At the Grigore Alexandrescu Hospital in Bucharest, we had 400 children every day, and if the parents stay too long with the children in one place, maybe some of them don't need UPU, most of them don't, but they need an investigation deeper, and these outpatient centers offer this possibility for those who need it at the moment.
Things are at the beginning, but I prefer to put them into operation, and to improve them during this month, because the viruses act in the winter, and then we have to be prepared from this point of view. It is true (n. ed. the lack of certain medicines from pharmacies), it is a problem that has been going on for years. Discontinuities in the provision of generic drugs, because that is what we are talking about.
I wish I had a magic wand to solve this problem. I put in the decision-making transparency, you can find on the website a ministerial order that modifies the method of calculating the reference price for medicines, which was discouraging, that is, the reference was to medicines that were sometimes no longer available on the market. We do this immediately, but within a few months we can solve some problems."
