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Denial of medical care – Romania At a psychiatric hospital in Poiana Mare (Romania), seventeen patients have reportedly died of malnutrition and hypothermia since the beginning of the year, and the remaining 440 patients are in danger unless the Romanian government immediately provides the hospital with adequate food, heating fuel and medication. Staff of the hospital have expressed concern about the lack of funds to adequately care for the patients, who were hungry, poorly clothed, infested with lice and had inadequate bedding. The heating system does not appear to be used at the hospital, a former army barracks, in a region where temperatures frequently fall below freezing for days, sometimes weeks at a time between November and March. In an interview with the national daily newspaper Evenimentul zilei, the mayor of the town Poiana Mare said that that he had not seen so many deaths in such a short period of time and that people were living in such miserable conditions that they were dying of hunger and cold. We would like to encourage our members to send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in French, English, German, Romanian or your own language: • expressing concern at the situation in the psychiatric hospital in Poiana Mare, • urging the government to take urgent measures to prevent any further deaths, including the provision of adequate food, medication, heating fuel, bedding and appropriate clothes for all the patients, • urging the government to establish a comprehensive and independent public inquiry into the situation at the Poiana Mare hospital and other psychiatric hospitals, leading to concrete improvement in the care of patients, and • urging the prosecutor general to immediately order a post-mortem investigation of the bodies of 17 patients held in Poiana are hospital morgue, to establish the cause of death. These appeals have to be sent immediately! Please contact the MHE secretariat for all relevant addresses. Thank you very much for your collaboration. Info: MHE-secretariat, [email protected] .
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