About 150 employees of the mental hospital in Poiana Mare (Dolj) started protests on Sunday night, threatening to resign unless Romanian health minister Eugen Nicolaescu changed his mind on decision to close down the hospital. Ileana Ionescu, president of Sanitas local organization in Dolj, said: "People are scared. All Sanitas organizations in Oltenia have expressed support for us. But I can tell you that during the night we were threatened that unless we gave up there would be blind bullets against us. Messages stopped when after we told the policemen." Marcela Ticu, leader of Poiana Mare mental hospital staff, says all the 300 employees in the latter hospital will resign unless officials renounced decision to close down the hospital. On Saturday while in Craiova health minister Eugen Nicolaescu announced that after talks with Justice minister Monica Macovei they decided to close down the mental hospital in Poiana Mare, hosting more than 450 patients. (...) Report released in August 17 said more than 45 patients in the hospital had died since the beginning of 2004 till early August 2005. Amnesty International wants to know why Janina Arsenjeva, author of the Amnesty International (AI) report on Romania, said yesterday that AI had discovered "violation of patients' rights" in the mental hospital in Poiana Mare. She explained: "Last year our experts did research in Poiana Mare and noticed violation of the rights of patients in this hospital. I know that conditions have improved to a certain extent ever since, but there have still been complaints about lack of monitoring and care of patients. Moreover, investigations on the death of several patients was inefficient, and we put pressure to reopen investigation." She said she would like to know the reasons why the health minister wanted to close down the clinic. The AI official mentioned: "If this decision is to the patients' good, of course Amnesty International appreciates it." Arsenjeva claimed that the patients in Poiana Mare had to be transferred to other institutions and provided with good medical care. She said: "Patients' good must be the main concern of the health minister and authorities. In other states, patients were transported to different clinics, but their state did not improve, because those hospitals were as bad are almost as bad."

Carmen POPESCU