The call from a doctor at the Burn Hospital: ”Make this video public because the Burn Hospital is killing people and something must be changed!”

The doctor filmed, in the hospital intensive care unit, a patient with maggots swarming on the back of his head.

UPDATE: The investigators from the Bucharest Prosecutor’s Office have opened a criminal file for suspicious death in the case of the patient from the Burn Hospital presented by GSP in today's images. The patient was filmed by a doctor, in an intensive care ward, with several larvae on the back of his head, in the wounds inflicted by burns.

UPDATE: The press conference of the Minister of Health, Vlad Voiculescu: "It is unacceptable that 6 months after Colectiv we haven’t learned anything. The conclusion is that we cannot shut down the entire hospital, what we did was to suspend the activity of the blood transfusion unit, which means that the severe burns patients were redirected. For sure the healthcare staff from there were in charge with the patients and they will be held responsible for that. The Bucharest Police representatives are already there. If we have an explosion across the country, we do not have any other place to take the wounded. We send them abroad! If 5 extra patients are coming, we have a serious problem as a country". Full statement HERE!

UPDATE: Around 11 o’clock the management of the Burn Hospital and the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit doctors will gather for an emergency meeting. An inside investigation was also initiated.

UPDATE: A team from DSP Bucharest (Public Health Department) has started an investigation at the Burn Hospital, after the images published by GSP. "This morning, a team of health inspectors from the Public Health Department in Bucharest has already gone to the Burn Hospital. They went to check the situation from there, to check all the sanitary conditions. There was a control in March this year at all the hospital units around the country, including the Burn Hospital. At all the healthcare facilities that have deficiencies. It is somehow obvious for everybody that there are management issues at this hospital unit, but the decision to shut down a hospital is not to be taken that easily. If sanctions are required, they will be applied”, stated the spokesman of the Ministry for Health, Laurențiu Colintineanu, at Realitatea TV, quoted by stiripesurse.ro.

UPDATE: The spokesman of the Burn Hospital, Doctor Adrian Stănculea, stated that the patient died and left room for the audience to understand that the situation is not an isolated case within the national healthcare system. The patient died but not because of the larvae. Those larvae do not kill him. It does not mean we leave them on the patient. The published image is authentic. I do not comment on that. There was this situation where a patient had four or five larvae on the burnt area. There are necrotic areas where you cannot plug your fingers and clean as if you were washing your hands, because there is a risk of being left with the ear in your hand. Those areas require delicate cleaning. One fly is enough to induce the damage, do not think it is the same as with a garbage can", said Stănculea at Antena 3.

Investigation by Mirela Neag, Răzvan Luțac, Marius Mărgărit and Cătălin Tolontan

A thousand words do not have the same impact as an image, but a thousand words do not give birth to an idea, says Italian professor Giovanni Sartori.

Watch the image! Yet be aware, there are no words to prepare you.

Afterwards, we will also talk about the idea.

The image is horrifying.

On the back of the man’s head, behind the ear, there are white larvae that have infested the body. Fly larvae.

The author of the movie is a doctor.

The images were taken two days ago at Emergency Hospital for Recovery and Reparatory Surgery and Burns in Bucharest.

The patient is admitted in the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit of the hospital.

"There is one more identical case, but we only managed to film this one", says the doctor.

"There are people admitted in the Burn Hospital 10-11 days ago. They were brought directly to us. As the ward is filled with flies, what you can see in the movie are most probably fly larvae", he further adds.

The doctor insists for the movie to be made public despite its disturbing impact.

”What is the point in hiding the truth? What is worse: to expose or to endure something like that, the patients and us, the ones who know the situation?!”, asks the doctor.

He supports his stand: "These are the conditions patients in this hospital are treated! And they must be changed!”.

It is not the first time

"A few years ago, a doctor wrote in the observation chart of a patient that ‘there are flies in the intensive care unit’ ”, relates the doctor to the experience a colleague of his went through.

” ’How could you write something like that?!’ was the reaction of doctors Adrian Stănculea, the head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department , and Tudor Stăncioiu. ‘The conditions you are providing the patients are not my responsibility, that is why!’, nervously replied the doctor", informs the source.

Being asked yesterday about the images filmed two days ago in the hospital, Adrian Stănculea, the head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit, had initially replied that they seem very improbable to him.

Then he added with a sigh: ”These are the conditions, we do not have proper conditions in the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit, do you know for how long we have been promised a new hospital?!”.

And that is how we get to the idea beyond the images.

Because sticking to the blame will not help anyone progress.

A hospital turned obsolete by the people

"The maggots have been on the patient for at least 24 hours, since this problem has been brought to the discussion", says the doctor who filmed everything.

"This is happening because the hygiene of the patients is not supervised, the management has given in”, he further adds.

The Burn Hospital was founded in 1958, "an old medical institution", as presented on the hospital site.

That is true.

But here on Grivița Blvd, it has been operating for 23 years, not for an eternity.

Founded by Agrippa Ionescu in the building of the current SRI (Intelligence Services) hospital on Arhitect Ion Mincu Street, the healthcare unit was moved in 1993 in the present building situated on Griviței Blvd, replacing the Steaua maternity hospital.

The burn patients have been given medical care in this building for over two decades.

Two decades that have turned into too long.

The hospital’s deterioration was brought to light immediately after ”Colectiv”

”The hospital is infected and people are staying in a germ bomb”, would say a doctor on December 3 in the article dedicated to the Colectiv case published by Gazeta .

Officially, at least three of the victims of the fire in the Colectiv club in Bucharest died in the Burn Hospital due to nosocomial infections contracted here.

That was all the hospital admitted.

But Gazeta published documents from the medical files of 9 victims.

"We saved them from a fire bomb and they died in a germ bomb", sounded the warning of the Gazeta source on December 3.

"Maybe for our hospital this will be a chance for the better, thank you!" reacted angrily but abruptly doctor Stănculea, immediately after the material from December 2015 was published.

"Absolutely nothing changed in the hospital although an extremely aggressive bacterium was discovered here, Pyocyanin, resistant to all the antibiotics treatments", say the doctors from ”Burns”.

Person is dead after a wrong blood transfusion 

The problems do not seem to come to an end here at the ”Burns” unit.

Yesterday the TV stations took over the news from Puterea site, according to which a patient admitted in the same hospital died after a wrong blood transfusion.

The 68-year-old woman was admitted in the hospital after having been bitten by a dog.

"At the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit we do not even have air conditioning"

INTERVIEW. The head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit from the Burn Hospital, Adrian Stănculea, admits the fact that patients are being treated in low hygiene conditions 

“Doctor, we have images with patients admitted in the unit you are running, on whose wounds maggots are swarming…”

“What’s that?!”

“Maggots. Are these frequent cases in this hospital?”

“No, God forbid! We had cases before, but they were found upon admission and those were patients in a state of extremely poor hygiene. But then they are cleaned, washed in the unique and already famous bathtub from the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit and further disinfected.”

“In the cases under discussion we are talking about patients that have already accumulated ten days of hospitalization. How do you explain this situation?”

“They are obviously fly larvae, so there was a contamination. Which is very probable as the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit lacks isolation premises, we do not have sliding doors, we do not have air conditioning, so flies might come up... but here we can also talk about a deficiency in the medical treatment, as these patients must be cleaned and bandaged on a daily basis.

About the solution

In December 2015, after having admitted the nosocomial infections for a part of the Colectiv victims, Cristian Niţescu, the medical director of the Burn Hospital, stated that "if we demand something, we demand a new hospital".

The demand stands also for the head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Unit. "The solution? A new building for this hospital and the establishment of several local burn units across the country. I know, we will not benefit from this, but the patients will", said doctor Stănculea.

A crisis solution is also provided by the doctor who did the filming. "There are modular field hospital units, equipped like the intensive care units, that are one hundred times more hygienic than this hospital".

The images are unbearable.

Any idea is better than the official one.

Because at the official level things will go on the same way.

According to the official site of the National Authority for Health Quality Management, on June 30, 2016 the Burn Hospital in Bucharest was undergoing the issuing process of an authorization report.