Hundreds of people have protested outside Romania’s health ministry after a fatal fire at one of the country’s main hospitals for Covid-19 patients, calling for the resignations of the president, the health minister and the emergencies chief.
At least five people died in the blaze, which broke out early on Friday on the ground floor of the Matei Bals hospital in Bucharest and forced the evacuation of more than 100 people.
It is the third hospital fire in Romania in as many months.
The protest was organised by the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, a right-wing political party established a little over a year ago by leaders who opposed same-sex marriages and have supported Orthodox clerics who defied pandemic restrictions to hold religious ceremonies.
Referring to the time since communism ended, AUR co-president George Simion said: “We are out of tears and out of patience after 31 years in which we paid taxes and got nothing in return. Not a single new hospital was built in Romania in 31 years.
“The money was stolen from the Romanian medical system.”
Mr Simion said the party and its supporters “want the resignation of those responsible”, naming health minister Vlad Voiculescu and department of emergency situations head Raed Arafat.
He said the AUR would donate its state financing to go towards the construction of a new hospital.
Protesters at Saturday’s demonstration chanted: “We don’t want to be led by thieves,” and also called for President Klaus Iohannis to resign.
Mr Voiculescu, the health minister, said the cause of Friday’s fire is not yet known and an investigation is ongoing.
He said: “We are waiting for the results for a number of reasons. One is to find out who is responsible, but most importantly, we need to learn the lessons that we need to learn.
“If we know the initial cause of this, we will know what measures need to be prioritized in order to prevent such things from happening again.”
The minister agreed that Romania needs to improve its medical infrastructure.
“We will build new hospitals,” he said. “There is no magical solution for turning an old building into a new one. We need new hospitals.”
Before the fire at the Matei Bals hospital, a November blaze in a Covid-19 intensive care unit in north Romania killed 10 people, and another at a psychiatric hospital in the same region killed one person in December.
