Criminal files on deaths from ATI, blocked by lack of medical experts

The medical expertise ordered in the 13 criminal files regarding the suspicious deaths of some patients in the ATI Covid section of the Sibiu Emergency Clinical County Hospital have not been completed, although 3 years and 5 months have passed since the opening of the initial criminal case, said the first deputy prosecutor, Mihaela Ruginosu, spokesperson of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Sibiu Court, quoted by the publication Turnul Sfatului.

Prosecutor Mihaela Ruginosu claims that the files have not been completed yet, after more than 3 years since they were opened, because "the expertises have not yet been completed", expertises that have not been demarcated, because "no doctors have been found" who to realize them.

According to the quoted source, the 13 files derived from the first criminal investigation started at the Sibiu County Clinical Hospital on March 8, 2021, after the appearance of an article in Turnul Sfatului, in which a former nurse who worked at the ATI Covid section at the respective medical unit stated, under the protection of anonymity, that patients infected with Sars-Cov 2 were killed there, the deaths occurring due to the faulty administration of medicines and medical procedures. The prosecutors noted, initially, that the medical staff "do not intentionally administer the treatments corresponding to the ailments that the people admitted to the ward have, but only administer anesthetics and sedatives, an aspect that leads to the death of the majority of patients treated in this way". That is why, in the first phase, the criminal investigation was carried out under the prism of the crime of qualified murder. Exactly like these days in the file regarding the death of a patient in the ATI ward of the Saint Pantelimon Hospital in Bucharest.

Later, the Sibiu prosecutors decided to change the legal classification of the acts committed by the medical personnel into manslaughter and instead of a single criminal file, following the ordinance of December 2, 2021, 13 files were established, for each deceased separately, cases in which the criminal investigations were to be continued. In the respective cases, medical examinations were ordered, but they could not be carried out until now, due to the lack of specialist doctors to analyze each individual situation.

The 13 criminal files drawn up by the prosecutors of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Sibiu Court partially answer the questions I raised at the end of the article published last week in the case of the Saint Pantelimon Hospital in the Capital.

In the respective material, we state that the facts that happened in April 2024 at the ATI section of the Pantelimon Hospital, should constitute an alarm signal, but also a reminder of the events during the Covid 19 pandemic. Through the lens of the explanation of the prosecutors from the Capital according to which the patient was killed by the medical staff to make room in the ICU for another patient with a better chance of survival, we asked in the respective article what happened to her during the pandemic, in the same hospital or in other hospitals not only in the capital, but also in the country?

And, lo and behold, two days ago Turnu Sfatului published the article regarding the situation of the 13 criminal files regarding patients who died in the ATI Covid Section of the Sibiu County Hospital. Files whose criminal investigation is incomplete, 2 years and 8 months after they were opened, because the ordered medical expertise has not been carried out. All this time, the possible medical personnel responsible for the death of the 13 people continue their work in the hospital in Sibiu, as if nothing had happened.

That situation shows not only the cynicism with which certain patients are treated in hospitals in the public health system, but also the impotence of the judicial system, which has been blocked for almost 3 years in the course of a criminal investigation due to the lack of specialists to carry out the necessary medical expertise.

Alexandru Rafila became Minister of Health on November 25, 2021, a week before the case prosecutor from the Public Prosecutor's Office attached to the Sibiu Court issued the order by which the initial file was split into 13 cases, for each individual patient. Later, probably at the request of the Sibiu County Hospital or the relatives of the deceased, medical expertise was requested to ascertain how the respective patients were treated in the ATI ward and whether this treatment could have led to their death. Since then, more than two years have passed, during which time no Sibiu doctor, no expert or doctor of medicine, not even a member of the College of Doctors has dared to do such an expertise. The representative of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Sibiu Court did not specify whether during this entire period she reported the respective situation to the Prosecutor General, so that he could intervene with the Ministry of Health to find specialists to carry out the 13 medical examinations. In any case, we are sure that the respective files appear in the statistics of unresolved files by the Sibiu Prosecutor's Office, statistics that are included in the annual activity report of the Public Ministry.

It is certain that in Sibiu there are 13 criminal files regarding the suspicious death of some patients from the ATI Covid Section of the local County Hospital. Perhaps the Public Ministry, the Prosecutor General or the Ministry of Justice will wake up from their lethargy, even though we are in the middle of the summer season when Romanian magistrates are on vacation, and ask Alexandru Rafila, the Minister of Health, to help them with some experts for the completion of the respective cases. Because the relatives of the deceased patients have been waiting for answers for too long, and the citizens want to know if they can trust the medical staff not only from the ATI section of the Sibiu County Hospital, nor only from the ATI section of the Saint Pantelimon Hospital in Bucharest, but from all hospitals in the public health system in our country.