The cooperation between the Republic of Moldova and Romania in the field of health developed in time and became closer, offering ultimately medical services of a high quality and better conditions in medical institutions for the citizens of the two countries, said experts invited to IPN’s public debate “Moldovan-Romanian cooperation in healthcare, opened opportunities”.

Ion Prisăcaru, secretary of state of the Ministry of Health, said that in time, within the Moldovan-Romanian cooperation, large investment were made in infrastructure. Health facilities were outfitted with medical equipment and devices, but cooperation didn’t stop here.

“The professional development of healthcare workers from both of the countries through experience exchange, participation in joint scientific researches and in international forums is another very important direction. I think that during 30 years, there was probably held no scientific forum, conference, congress without joint participation by specialists from the Republic of Moldova and those from Romania, either these were held in our country or in the neighboring country. The third very important component is the agreements on medical services, which are provided to the citizens, both the Romanians and those form the Republic of Moldova, and I here refer first of all to the SMURD project to ensure transfers of critical patients and to agreements of medical assistance in cases when a particular service cannot be provided in one of these countries.  I can give as an example the organ transplant sector where we also have an agreement and organs from donors in cases of compatibility are exchanged. There are a lot of areas, large areas with specific actions for each of them,” stated Ion Prisăcaru.

Mihai Ciocanu, director of the Emergency Medicine Institute, said the fact that the Moldovan-Romanian cooperation is based on joint national values and there are no linguistic or communication barriers is a big advantage.

“In this cooperation, we don’t need intermediaries. We can discuss openly all the problems and solutions to different problems that appear in the health system and it is very important that this cooperation turns into palpable institutions that are built with money provided by Romania or by the European Union through the agency of Romania. We also have a lot of cases when our patients were saved beacause we used SMURD services, primarily airport services when patients cannot be transported by land, by vehicles and we used SMURD helicopters from Iasi or Galati to transport these patients from district hospitals to third hospitals in Chisinau or from third hospitals in Chisinau to hospitals in Iasi, Bucharest where they receive expert medical care. I want to tell you that our institution has good cooperation relations with state-run organizations of Romania and with medical institutions based in Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj-Napoca, Târgu-Mureș. We often learn from their experience in organizing medical services,” stated Mihai Ciocanu.

Director of the Oncology Institute Ruslan Baltaga said that through cooperation with Romania, they managed to accelerate a number of processes in the research sector, in the educational sector, as regards technological transfer, interhuman technological relations and relations between professional societies.

“We managed to ensure a common force and applied for European projects and this enabled us to ensure long-term internships with European scholarships for resident doctors. As regards oncology, in the European space we meet with mates from Romania and this way we support each other. A concrete case is that we recently became a member of the Organization of European Cancer Institutes. This institution successfully applied to the Horizon Europe program. We are part of this project and together with our mates from Romania, we applied to become one of the seven countries where this project will be piloted. So, there are many accomplishments,” stated Ruslan Baltaga.

The public debate entitled “Moldovan-Romanian cooperation in healthcare, opened opportunities” was staged in the framework of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information”, which is implemented by IPN News Agency with support from the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova of the Government of Romania.