The Minister of Health finally officially announces a series of very important measures for millions of Romanians, after years of waiting, and this is because Alexandru Rafila is talking about the fact that the Mari Arsi hospitals will be completed in the near future, which so many people are waiting for them.
The Minister of Health talks below about the source of funds for the construction of these hospitals in the coming years, but he also talks about the legislative changes that are being made so that doctors can benefit from better paid guards and even more than that, in the coming years.
"The centers for major burns are under construction, the most advanced is the one in Timisoara. There are three centers. When we came to the Ministry of Health, in November 2021, we found all these projects frozen and, so to speak, lost, because the funding had ended - it was the 2014-2020 financial exercise financed by the World Bank - and then we very quickly resumed negotiations with the World Bank.
We managed to find an agreement there, we signed two of the contracts. The works are being carried out rapidly in Timişoara, where it has already been under construction for several months. Construction has also started at the Grigore Alexandrescu hospital, where there will be a major burns center for children, and another one in Târgu Mureş - we will sign the contract during this year, and their completion will be in the first part of 2025.
They will probably be the first big investments in health that will be ready in the first half of 2025, along with many other investments that are being made, smaller in scope, perhaps less visible, but still very important. It is a network of outpatient centers that will be ready, some of them, by the end of next year.
Things have changed compared to eight years ago, at least for people with good faith and who see how burned patients are treated in Romania at the moment. We have trained personnel, it is clear that things have changed, including the procedures for transfer, because, after the incident in Crevedia, within 24 hours all those who could not be taken over by the hospitals in the country.
They were transferred abroad. The proposals have been sent to the Ministry of Labor for a long time, we are also waiting for a consolidated version of this law. It will surely be passed through Parliament because it is a very important law. What corrections could he bring?"
