Pharma boss killed and health minister resigns after products used for years on hospital wards were hugely watered down

Romanians have been left appalled by a multimillion-euro medical fraud scandal – in which a big pharmaceutical company allegedly watered down disinfectants for use on hospital wards for years. Hundreds of people may have been infected as a result.

Public protests have broken out in several towns and the health minister quit after lab tests showed about 10 products supplied to more than 150 hospitals had been diluted, in some cases rendering them useless.

The head of the pharma company in the line of fire died in a car crash this week. Suicide or foul play have not been ruled out.

“Ordinary people are simply appalled by the scale of the toxic links established among providers of health products and hospital managers,” said Ioan Milica, a 40-year-old professor from Iași, a city in north-east Romania. “Now, the task of the government officials is not only to shed light on what is really going on, but also to meet the demands related to the elimination of dishonesty and corruption from public healthcare.”

The affair has exposed one of the EU’s weakest healthcare systems. Romania spends €1.7bn on health annually – less than most other EU peers – but has Europe’s highest rate of “avoidable deaths”: almost 50%. Every year, dozens of people are prosecuted for corruption in the health sector, according to the National Anticorruption Directorate.

The current scandal blew up last month when an investigative reporter, Cătălin Tolontan, wrote in the newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor that antiseptics and disinfectants provided by a group called Hexi Pharma to hospitals were being diluted. Lab analyses provided by the paper found that the active substances had been watered down, in some cases by a factor of 10, leaving them as weak as dishwater.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dan Condrea, who was killed in a car crash. Photograph: Andreea Alexandru/AP

Hexi Pharma’s owner, Dan Condrea, responded by closing the factory. “Our 50 employees will stay at home till we find out what happened,” the company said in a statement. “We didn’t lie.”

The health minister, Patriciu Achimaş-Cadariu, resigned, and protests erupted on the streets at the way a government investigation was handled. The prime minister, Dacian Cioloș, ordered Hexi products to be independently analysed. Some active ingredients had been weakened by more than 90%. A substance used by surgeons for washing hands had a concentration of 0.01% for one ingredient instead of 25%.

Last weekend, a day before he was due to face prosecutors on fraud charges, Condrea died when his speeding car hit a tree on a road near Bucharest.



Days before his death, Condrea had asked a judge to declare his factory bankrupt but prosecutors refused. “The fate of the factory is uncertain now,” said a Hexi Pharma spokeswoman, Loredana Albu. “Last Friday, before Condrea’s death, he ordered a strategy to recover the business, but now we know nothing.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women wear masks that read ‘corruption kills’ at a protest in Romania. Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP

Romanian doctors have been outraged by the revelations. Cătălin Cîrstoveanu, chief of neonatal intensive care at the Marie Curie hospital in Bucharest, told local media: “I’m shocked. I feel mocked. We bathed the children with those substances from head to feet. I realise now, they put alcohol with perfume in my substances. It’s incredible. I’m thinking of one thing now: I could have saved many children. A lot more. I can’t believe it.”

Liviu Muntean, the manager of Brasov children’s hospital, wrote on Facebook: “Because of those disinfectants I have lived the darkest week of my life. The hospital I run bought from Hexi. I’m paralysed with fear now thinking that, in all these years, I put in danger the health of my patients and of my hospital. I put in danger my career, my professional credibility, even my freedom.”



Health officials have been repeatedly warned about high levels of hospital-acquired infections in Romania, and a parliamentary commissions has established the health ministry had been alerted to the rogue disinfectants. Ministry officials refused to comment.

Doctor Marian Sorin Paveliu, an expert in health policies at Romanian Academic Society (SAR), an NGO in Bucharest, said the Hexi scandal was the tip of the iceberg. “I’m convinced that people died in hospitals because the substances were diluted, but it’s important to say that are other causes, too,” he said.

Sorin Cristian Semeniuc is a journalist at the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism