Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Israel expressed intention to take over part of the injured patients in the ‘Colectiv’ club fire, as at present there are too many patients with severe burns and not enough hospital beds with ventilation needed for these cases in the Romanian hospitals. They are to be transported by the Defence Ministry’s Spartan aircrafts.
The statements were made by Raed Arafat, secretary of state within the Interior Ministry and Health minister Nicolae Banicioiu at Victoria Palace on Thursday. They explained that patients with burns on a wide area of the body need special beds equipped with mechanical ventilation.
“Bucharest has 51 such beds in Bucharest and 300 plastic surgery beds (…) There are patients with a totally particular pathology than the ones who have usual burns. So, compared to Romania’s capacity, the number of patients resulting from this accident is much too high (…) No other European country has such a capacity for such a high number of burnt patients at once, this is what our French and Israeli colleagues also told me,” Health minister Banicioiu argued.
Raed Arafat thus informed that several European countries offered to shelter and treat some of the patients injured in the nightclub fire.
“We’ve got in touch with several embassies in Bucharest during the past days and we received their offers to host the patients in these countries’ hospitals. It was difficult enough, as every country has a well-kept number of burn hospital seats according to every national capacity. Yet, there are countries that offered a number of beds, for instance Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and there are some other states which consider helping us (….),” Arafat said.
The selection of the patients who will eventually be transported abroad will be made by the medical staff of those countries, but also by Romanian doctors, according to certain standards: if the patient can be taken over by that hospital, if he/she can be transferred and bear the transportation, as there is a risk of being transported and so on.
Arafat mentioned that teams of foreign doctors have already begun coming to Romania to select the cases and to take them over for treatment.
“Today, the first team arrived in Romania, there are doctors from the military hospital in Brussels, a surgeon and an anesthesiologist assessing all cases that could be taken over in Belgium. Initially, Belgium offered us three seats at the Intensive Care Unit and five normal seats, but today we talked again and the number of the beds might increase,” he added.
As far as the costs are concerned, the secretary of state mentioned that each patient will have an E112 form, while the transport will be totally paid by the Romanian state and provided by the Defence Ministry’s Spartan aircrafts.
Earlier in the day, UK also reviewed the possibility of providing medical assistance to the nightclub fire’s injured. Further details here: http://www.romaniajournal.ro/medical-aid-for-bucharest-burns-victims-will-be-reviewed-by-british-pm-david-cameron-after-plea-from-mp-and-plastic-surgeon/