BUCHAREST – Romanian prosecutors said Saturday they have launched a criminal investigation into five doctors suspected of reusing hundreds of medical implants removed from dead patients.
One of the five doctors working at a hospital in the eastern Romanian city of Iași has been taken into custody pending investigation on charges of abuse of power and bribery, prosecutors said in a statement.
They said the unnamed doctor oversaw a network of four other physicians who provided them with heart transplants removed from deceased patients without prior approval from them or their families.
Prosecutors allege the doctor performed 238 surgeries over seven years from 2017, used transplants illegally removed from deceased patients or from an unknown source, and put his patients at risk of serious complications or death.
“A vast majority of doctor-recommended transplants … were not necessary and were prompted by a fake diagnosis or previously prescribed medication that would trigger specific symptoms,” the statement said.
Romania’s healthcare system, one of the least developed within the European Union, suffers from corruption, inefficiencies and political management.
The state has built a hospital over the past three decades, has the lowest spending on healthcare in the European Union and tens of thousands of doctors and nurses have emigrated.
