A short drive from downtown Bucharest, an eight-storey hospital is rapidly taking shape. The building, which will open in early 2021, is more than just a healthcare facility. It is a symbol of Romanian frustration with successive governments and a growing realisation that maybe citizens need to find their own solutions to the country’s problems.

Since 2015, more than 300,000 people and over 4,000 companies have donated money to construct the facility, which will treat children with cancer and will be the first state hospital built entirely through private donations. More than €30m (£25m) has been raised so far, enough to build and equip it. The heavy metal band Metallica donated €250,000 when they came to play a concert in Bucharest last August.

“I think Romanians needed a project to believe in because for the past 30 years nothing was built, no roads, no hospitals, no infrastructure,” said Oana Gheorghiu, one of the two founders of Give Life Association, the NGO behind the project.

Since the end of communism in 1989, Romania has lagged behind in terms of public investment. It has the lowest spending on healthcare as a percentage of GDP in the EU, at about half the EU average, according to the latest available figures from Eurostat. At the same time, each year thousands of doctors and nurses leave the country for better-paid jobs abroad, and corruption and scandals continue to plague the sector.

Last year one Romanian entrepreneur, fed up with the lack of progress in creating a modern road network in the country, inaugurated a symbolic, one-metre-long stretch of motorway he had constructed to publicly shame the government’s lack of investment.

While that stunt was aimed at drawing attention to a problem, the hospital in Bucharest is a potential solution, albeit one that will be hard to replicate.

Donations have poured in through the NGO’s website and via SMS. Some of the biggest donations have come from the energy companies OMV Petrom and Engie, as well as Mastercard. The average individual donation on the website is about €16.

“My donation isn’t a big deal, but I am very happy to see a project like Dăruiește Viața coming true,” said Livia Grigorescu, a schoolteacher in a small town outside Bucharest, using the Romanian name of the NGO. Grigorescu donates €2 a month via SMS. “For me, this is a hope for a better future and, in the meantime, a proof of what can be done when people really want it.”

Built on the grounds of one of the city’s existing hospitals, the paediatric oncology wing will cover 12,000 sq metres, with a floor dedicated to intensive care, six operating rooms and about 160 beds. Construction started in June 2018.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest How the planned hospital will look. Photograph: Handout

“We wanted to refurbish and remodel the oncology department here [at the existing facility],” said Gheorghiu, pointing out that they had done the same with a hospital in Timişoara, in the west of the country. But, she said, they found it would be easier to build a new structure than to renovate the existing one, which was constructed in the late 1970s.

Gheorghiu, who was a student at the time of the 1989 revolution, said the Romanian healthcare system had not improved over the last 30 years. “It’s actually even worse than it was during the communist era, because the infrastructure was not developed at all so they have the same resources.”

Vlad Voiculescu, a former health minister who co-founded a children’s cancer charity in 2014, spoke of a disconnect between the growth in other parts of the Romanian economy and investment in areas such as healthcare. “Our private sector has thrived. Hundreds of office buildings in Romania’s cities, impressive living areas, and probably the biggest shopping malls in Europe. Our government, on the other hand, has managed to build only one new hospital in three decades,” he said.

“There is this urgency for decent hospital infrastructure, as sub-optimal medical care drives tens of thousands to move west each year. This hospital simply shows us that we, Romanians, are better than our government. That we can and we deserve better.”

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Since Give Life was founded in 2012 – by Gheorghiu and Carmen Uscatu, neither of whom had a medical background – it has helped to build 18 sterile transplant rooms in Romania, tripling the country’s transplant capacity. The association has also constructed the country’s first laboratory for the “deep diagnosis” of leukaemia, and renovated oncology departments for children and adults in three of the country’s largest cities.

Even so, relations between the NGO and government officials have, at times, been strained.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Examining the plans at the construction site in Bucharest. Photograph: Enrico Brodoloni

In contrast, the NGO is heavily engaged with its donors, using social media posts to keep them up to date with developments and to give them a sense of ownership. This has kept money pouring in.

Given the progress, it is tempting to wonder whether this approach to healthcare funding could be rolled out in other countries in the region with ageing and poorly funded health infrastructure. However, experts are not convinced the model is replicable more widely.

“It’s fantastic, it will save lives, but it reminds me of the 1990s,” said Pascal Garel, the chief executive of the Brussels-based European Hospital and Healthcare Federation. “It puts pressure on the government in Romania saying you’re not able to run the system properly and fund it. That’s incredible.” He said a healthcare system’s problems could not be solved by such an initiative because it could not be done over and over again for different medical issues and age groups.

Gheorghiu said they hoped to inspire others and they are well aware that one hospital will not change the entire system. However, she said the aim was to create “an island where things work normally and when people come – patients, doctors and nurses – they will see that things can be done differently and they will start changing”.

The new hospital will become part of the public health system upon completion, and Give Life is already looking beyond the initial construction. “We have the money for the first building, but now the project has been extended,” said Gheorghiu. “We’re planning to do another building that will be connected with this one. The new hospital building will be about as big as the first.”