26th August: Giulesti news update

For today's update on Florentina Carstea's arrest and the continuing investigations into the fire at Giulesti Maternity hospital (sic Marius Iacob), please see today's edition of Nine O'Clock at THIS link. The reason given for the arrest is that she kept changing her story. (see 2nd story down)..and frankly, who wouldn't. She knew she was wrong for having left the ward for the twelve minutes quoted (but then again, anyone would have to go to the WC at some point over a 720 minute time period) and she was scared. Very scared. A comment on yesterday's post: if every politician in Roumania were to be jailed because he'd lied, there wouldn't be a single one left in the country.... Touché and well said. In the country of my heart, it's hardly a crime to lie anymore than it's a crime to demand spaga as a nurse for changing a patients' bedsheets, or as a doctor to operate on an elderly patient who has fallen and fractured a hip...come on! A little transparency here. It is only a crime when it is convenient for the Fat Cats that it be so...quand ça convient, quoi. Making an example of Florentina gets the heat off their own sorry incompetence...

Florentina Carstea's lawyer is not helping by gabbing to the press every time she makes a statement - such declarations should be made at trial to the judge, not to the press who are out on a pure witch-hunt instead of turning their attention to the real culprits: Marinescu, Ranga and Savu not forgetting Cseke and Oprescu, too...

"Innocent until proven guilty" seems to have no place here and shame on those who have kicked it out of sight. Thirty-five year-old Florentina Carstea has been all but condemned in the eyes of the public. Why is she standing there alone? As some kind of effort to restore faith in the healthcare system? If the public (considering they are idiots which a great proportion are not) see that it was all down to the incompetence of one nurse, they will not blame the system and demand better...whose ridiculous reasoning was that? Everyone in the country (and those outside it) distrust the Roumanian healthcare system - and I use the word 'system' in the vaguest of terms. In my opinion, confidence can only begin to resurface - and very slowly at that - when the real culprits have been brought to book and the whole sorry mess (see Herald Online article) has been completely revamped - money gets where it should, security measures are taken, jobs are unblocked and discipline and professionalism have become the norm. In recession-battered Roumania, says the Herald, the government in 2009 spent just 3.7% of the national GDP on health (around 4 bn euros) - that's way less than half in percentage terms of the EU average...

If responsibility is not assumed by Cseke and all those others sitting there in positions of so-called 'trust', they will have completely destroyed the pitiful dregs of what is left of the health service, today hanging on by the tiniest of threads. "Everyone who has managed it in the last twenty years is guilty," remarks an article in Ziare. This excellent article affirms that what happened in Giulesti was perfectly predictable. What does anyone expect in such conditions... When such an essential department works on one solitary nurse and the ancient (9 years old) electrical system runs on dangerous improvisation that noone has bothered to remedy during that time...well, it was a sadly foregone conclusion. The article asks 'didn't Florentina Carstea have the right to a 12 minute break over a period of 12 hours?' That is a loud and resounding question that, as an ex-nurse, I can fully relate to. Anyone doing shift-work could relate to that. 12 minutes out of 12 hours. That is one hell of a long shift and one hell of a long time to keep one's legs crossed. Florentina cannot be blamed for that.

Commentaires [2]