Prosecutors said on Saturday they have opened a criminal investigation into five doctors suspected of reusing hundreds of medical implants extracted from dead patients.
One of the five doctors, who was working at a hospital in the eastern Romanian city of Iasi, has been taken into custody pending the investigation on charges of abuse of power and bribe taking, prosecutors said in a statement.
The Unidentified doctor oversaw a network of four other doctors who provided him with cardiac implants extracted from deceased patients without prior approval from them or their families.
Prosecutors allege the doctor performed 238 illegal surgeries over seven years, using implants extracted from dead patients or of unknown provenance and putting the patients at risk of serious complications or death.
I a statement, a large part of the implants recommended by the doctor…were not necessary and were prompted by fake diagnoses or by previously prescribed medication that would trigger specific symptoms.
Romania’s healthcare system, one of the least developed within the European Union, has been dogged by corruption, inefficiencies and politicized management.
The state has built one hospital in the last three decades and spends the least on healthcare in the EU, with tens of thousands of doctors and nurses having emigrated.
