Update 2: Prosecutors probe into video footage revealing larvas swarming on the burns of a patient hospitalized in Bucharest

Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital for Burnt closed down.

Bucharest Public Health Direction is conducting checks at the Hospital for Burnt on Thursday after a video footage revealed flies’ larvas on the wounds of a burnt patient admitted in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

The video footage was released by tolo.ro, the same website that disclosed other irregularities of the healthcare system, including the Hexi Pharma’s diluted disinfectants scandal.

According to the Health Ministry’s spokesperson, Laurentiu Colintineanu, the patient had died in the meanwhile, and the author of the video footage was a doctor who insisted that the film should be disclosed.

“What’s the point in hiding the reality? What’s worse: to make all public or to stick it out that way, the patients and we, the doctors who know that?,” the doctor said, as quoted by tolo.ro.

The doctor also revealed that there is a similar case in the hospital and that the intensive care unit is invaded by flies.

On the other side, the managers of the hospital say that the fly worms did not cause the patient’s death, but he would have died due to the serious burns.

The hospital’s spokesperspon, Adrian Stanculea, admitts there are no proper hygiene conditions in the hospital, but argues a new building is needed.

„These are the conditions, there are no other ones in the intensive care unit. Do you know how long ago we have been promised a new hospital?” the spokesperson told Digi 24.

The Hospital for Burnt in Bucharest was involved in recent scandal after a 68-year-old woman died in the hospital in June following a wrong blood transfusion.

As a response to the two cases, the Health Ministry’s Sanitary Inspection decided to closed down the Intensive Care Unit within the Hospital for Burnt on Thursday evening, after previously in the morning it also stopped any procedure at the hospital’s transfusion center.

In a press conference on Thursday, Health Minister Vlad Voiculescu said there are “serious management issues” at the Hospital for Burnt, that the staff is scarce and there are also infrastructure problems. The minister also revealed that he had considered closing the hospital down, but the conclusion was that he couldn’t do that, as the burnt patients couldn’t be treated anywhere else.

For the time being the option of relocating the Hospital for Burnt is the only valid one.

Health Minister Voiculescu also warned that the current situation is critical. Asked what would happen to the victims of a new explosion, he said that “the victims would be transported abroad”. “The Burnt ward at the Floreasca Hospital has all the 6 beds taken. We don’t have the necessary capacity of another 5 patients came. It’s a serios problem, unacctebale as a country,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Bucharest Prosecutor’s Office was notified and started a file for suspect death on the case of the patient invaded by larvas. Police officers went to the hospital to seize documents.

The Romanian Ombudsman was also notified ex-officio in the two cases at the Hospital for Burnt.