15 investments and 7 months after the inauguration, ”the modern unit for burn treatment” at Floreasca is still unused

The hospital unit had been designed explicitly for ”operations in case of calamity with burn patients and collective accidents”. Ioan Lascăr explains why not even a single patient has been treated there for 7 months. Not even the injured from ”Colectiv”.

UPDATE: DISTURBING COINCIDENCE. A reader informs that Floreasca Hospital published on its site an employment announcement for the modern burn unit precisely on October 30, 2015, a few hours before the tragedy in the club. Another reality of the Romanian health system: 7 months after its inauguration in April 2015, the center is unoperational and staff is still being recruited.

UPDATE: Here is what the documents of the World Bank, the financier of the project, stipulate: ”Civil works and endowment with equipment will include the: (a) rehabilitation of intensive-care units; (...) (e) creation of four new burn units (with roughly six beds each within a regional hospital);  Four burn units of 6 to 8 beds each will be created in Bucharest, Iasi, Timisoara, and Tirgu Mures, in order to achieve an equitable distribution at the national level of the capacity of severe burn treatment and to avoid long-distance transfers. The burn centers require the complete endowment of at least two operating rooms, one septic and one aseptic room for each center, and the creation of rooms with positive and negative pressure”

31 young people are dead. What do we provide for the doctors who go up against all odds to save the 90 patients who are critically or severely injured?

The story we are about to unfold was revealed to us by the doctors themselves. And we have not published it until we got all the official statements on this matter, although some of them are contradictory.

On April 9, 2015, the “modern burn unit” was inaugurated at Floreasca Emergency Hospital: a designated hospital unit, endowed with 6 wards and an operating room.

”Health Minister Nicolae Bănicioiu, present at the inauguration, mentioned that Floreasca Emergency Hospital has an elite unit, the first of a series of five or even six units of this type”, Mediafax states.

”The severe burn patients, with injuries covering more than half of the body, will benefit from a treatment at Western European standards within the new unit of the Floreasca Hospital. The severe burns will be treated in a special room, where operations may also be conducted in case of calamities and collective accidents. The patients will be bathed and connected to the machines that help them breath and suppress the pain”, TVR mentions. Here you can watch the news from April 2015 aired by TVR. This came after Anca Grădinaru had also informed about the center’s construction and endowment ordeal on Antena 1 in 2012. Issues had been resolved, said the high officials in April 2015.

”There are six wards altogether, with only one bed in each ward. This way, the patients will no longer risk being infected from one another” TVR NEWS ABOUT THE INAUGURATION OF THE ”MODERN BURN UNIT”

"This Unit is one of its kind in the country. I say that again, we are talking about the severe burn patient. The patient is installed on a stretcher that slides and introduced in a module that resembles a space capsule”, said the chief of the plastic surgery and reconstructive microsurgery department at Floreasca, Ioan Lascăr, for Mediafax.

The doctor further explained: ”We had 40 beds, now we have six more, we had two operating rooms within this department and one for chronic patients, now we have here one for the severe burn patients. This unit is exclusively dedicated to the severe burn patients, with over 50% of the body covered by serious burns, we estimate we will probably treat a few tens a year". The doctor also said that ”above the unit there is a medical air plant, providing the only air that goes into the unit, through the roof”.

The investment process lasted 15 years.

The construction started in 2000, it was funded by Sector 1 City Hall and was completed in 2008. Then, from 2008 until 2014, the medical equipment’s cost exceeded 4 million euros and was supported by the Ministry for Health.

After 15 years of struggle, the modern burn unit was inaugurated on April 9, 2015.

On October 30, 2015, when the burn patients from Colectiv reached Floreasca Hospital, they weren’t taken to the 6 designated wards and in the operating room waiting in the modern burn unit.

As the modern burn unit was not operational. Shortly after the festive inauguration, technical issues have prevented it from becoming operational. And it never treated patients, not even a single one.

Being on air this morning at Europa FM, minister Nicolae Bănicioiu initially claimed that the special unit "is in a functional state".

After being asked what "in functional state" means, the minister admitted that "as far as I know and from what professor Lascăr informed me, it is not currently functional but it will become functional within a few days, as it had a technical problem". The minister further stated that it was inaugurated in April because otherwise we would have lost the money from the World Bank who is financing the project.

The Floreasca Emergency Hospital spokesman and the head of the Emergency Department, Bogdan Oprița, stated for a reporter of Europa FM that "I do not comment on this matter, please ask doctor Lascăr".

After we had the dialogue with the minister at Europa FM, according to the testimony of a high official from the Floreasca Hospital, a meeting was held there.

During a phone conversation we had immediately after the ”Floreasca” meeting, professor Ioan Lascăr admitted that ”until now, the modern burn unit has never been used since its inauguration as we had no severe burn patients and there were, it’s true, several issues with the airing system”.

Doctor Ioan Lascăr further explained that the ”Unit has encountered, indeed, technical issues but they were fixed. We chose not to operate in the same room as we have 14 patients and we operate in three rooms at the same time. We appointed an area within the intensive care department for such cases. We did not want to separate the patients as I cannot separate the staff I have at my disposal. I cannot ask the doctors to take the elevator to run all over the place”.

”We did everything for the sake of the patients” PROFESSOR DOCTOR IOAN LASCĂR

”I understand your questions because it is normal for you and the people to ask yourselves why we do not use the unit as long as so much money was invested in it. But it is too small, capacity wise, for the current situation. We have just gathered for a meeting and we decided we might move the patients there, as soon as they begin to recover”, said doctor Ioan Lascăr.