When going to a birth center resembles a Russian roulette, with no guarantees that the mother and child will be healthy & cared for, you know that a health care system has failed. Unfortunately, this is the case with Romania's rotten universal health care system. A warning to all those universal-health-care-gurus in the United States. There is no glamor to a corrupt, mismanaged, state-run system. And no reliable, equitable treatment either.
According to the UNICEF data, Romania has the highest child mortality rate in the developed world: 19 deaths per every 1000 newborn children. The chart shows many former Communist countries ranking close – such as Albania (18/1000), Russia (17/1000) or Serbia (15/1000). But some formerly Communist countries like Slovenia or the Czech Republic have fewer infant deaths even than the US (7/1000). Another grim statistic where Romania holds the leading position is the one regarding mothers who die at birth.
Beyond the statistics, a recent case shocked the Romanian public: 40-year-old Natalia Ionescu died on October 11 in a prestigious birth center in Romania’s capital Bucharest, after delivering a boy in a C-section. Her husband, journalist Mihai Ionescu, claims she was not given any transfusion after 12 hours of massive blood loss.
more here.
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Dec 18th, 2007
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