Updated 00:29 | Published 00:27
Romania is rocked by a healthcare scandal.
Elderly people were starved and beaten in torture-like conditions.
– A national shame, says Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis.
An elderly care scandal in Romania has shaken the country. In three privately owned nursing homes near Bucharest, around 100 people were found beaten, malnourished, tormented by worms and without access to medicine. The living conditions on “the horror asylums” described by the Romanian media as “torture-like”, and controlled by organized crime.
Although a previous review by journalists and the non-profit organization Center for Legal Resources was already done last year, the scandal broke only last week. Prosecutors from anti-corruption units then searched over 31 areas as part of a national investigation into exploitation and abuse of the elderly, minors and the disabled.
About twenty people have been charged in the scandal.
“Everyone was bitten by bedbugs”
A year ago, the first reports came that things were not right. The organization Center for Legal Resources reported the findings of the investigation into the nursing homes to the country’s labor market minister Marius Budai, who terminated the CRL’s mission.
But after investigative journalists took hold and public criticism of the government grew, a nationwide review of social services was issued. After more than a thousand homes have been reviewed, 13 have now been shut down and a further 43 have been shut down.
But the most shocking images come from the three nursing homes outside Bucharest. A former employee of one of the accommodations tells the digging journalists from Romanian Investigative media.
– They were all bitten by bedbugs, had larvae around their private parts and scabies. You can’t imagine!, she tells the newspaper.
In another article, pictures of elderly people who have been abused are shown. One with blood running from his nose, another with bruises around his eyes and a third with marks from blows to his face. Several elderly people have untreated wounds on their bodies.
Two departures in Romania’s top tier
According to the prosecutors, the owners should have received hundreds of thousands of kroner in monthly government support, which was not used to take care of the patients. Instead, the approximately SEK 8 million was spent on parties, drugs and prostitutes, among other things.
– Protecting the old and weak has become a cynical profit-seeking business at all costs. Often through cruel suffering, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said on Thursday.
After a week of mutual accusations finally resigned the labor market minister the day before yesterday, a week after he “still could not close problematic nursing homes”.
A day later, Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea also resigned after she allegedly received a three-day ultimatum from Prime Minister Ciolacu.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called the news a “national shame” on Tuesday.
– Everyone who knew something and did nothing is guilty, he said.