Minister of Health Ioana Mihaila declared on Thursday, regarding the situation in the intensive care units, that the problem is not only about the number of beds, but rather the teams of doctors and nurses "trained to properly treat patients in the ICU".
"Just as the previous Minister said, the problem is not just the number of beds, but the teams of doctors and nurses properly trained to treat patients in the ICU. Also, today, along with the head of the nursing staff, we will reevaluate the situation in Bucharest, because I understand that this is where the biggest issue is and we will see if we can resize and rethink the ICUs," Mihaila said, at the Ministry of Health.
Mihaila also said that training a doctor takes 11 years, and the problems related to the staff training will only be resolved "only in the medium to long term".
"It takes 11 years to train a doctor with the years of college and 5 years of residency, on average. It is obvious that we cannot fix matters from one month to a another, or even from one year to another. I will encourage universities and we will have a meeting with the universities next week, but the problems with staff training will only be resolved in the medium to long term. (...) For this my colleagues have made every effort in increasing the number of beds, to make room in non-COVID ICUs, they have already modified the structures of the COVID and non-COVID hospitals and things are a little better than they were before," the Minister said.
Ioana Mihaila said that she will meet with the Secretary General with the Ministry in order to take over the documents from the previous minister, then she will meet with the two secretaries of state in order to take on from their activities, the evaluation of what happened last week, and during the second part of the day there will be a "technical" discussion with the representatives of the European Commission regarding the National Resilience and Recovery Plan, discussion which she "inherited from the previous term".
Asked whether she had a talk with Prime Minister Florin Citu, the minister replied: "Only a short one, at Cotroceni [Presidential Palace], yesterday".