Several doctors suspected of taking hundreds of medical implants from corpses and reusing them in live patients are facing criminal investigation in Romania, prosecutors have said.
One of the five medics, who was working at a hospital in the eastern city of Iași, has been taken into custody pending the investigation on charges of abuse of power and bribe-taking, a statement said.
Prosecutors said the unnamed doctor oversaw a network of four other physicians who handed him cardiac implants taken from dead patients without prior approval from either them or their families.
Prosecutors allege the doctor performed 238 procedures over seven years from 2017, illegally using implants extracted from dead patients or of unknown provenance and putting his patients at risk of serious complications or death.
“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,” the statement said.
Romania’s healthcare system, one of the least developed within the European Union, has been dogged by corruption, inefficiencies and politicised management.
The state has built one hospital in the last three decades, spends the least on healthcare in the EU and tens of thousands of doctors and nurses have emigrated.
