EU funding for hospitals

Romania signed the financing contracts under the NRRP for new hospital infrastructure

Mihai Pelin, 21.04.2023, 13:50

The Romanian defence minister, Angel
Tîlvăr, and health minister, Alexandru Rafila, have signed a number of
financing contracts for healthcare infrastructure investment projects under the
National Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).

The funds will be channeled into military
hospitals around the country, as well as other hospitals in Bucharest and Constanţa
(south-east). The emergency military hospitals in Sibiu (centre), Piteşti (south),
Craiova (south-west) and Braşov (centre) will receive money for revamping and
for building new wards.

The defence minister says patients’
confidence in military hospitals is quite high and emphasized that substantial
funding will be used for such hospitals.

Angel Tîlvăr: The documents I am honoured to sign today
together with Mr. Rafila, the health minister, allow the financing of new
buildings for 4 military hospitals in the country, which will receive around
EUR 81 mln under Component 12, Healthcare, of the RRP.

Also under the RRP, in Bucharest a new TB
diagnosis and treatment centre will be built, using some EUR 26 mln. The
manager of the Pneumophtysiology Institute, Beatrice Mahler, explains that this
investment will benefit both patients, and the specialists in the field:

Beatrice Mahler: This investment
has been long awaited by Romanian TB patients, who fortunately, thanks to this
kind of investments, will no longer feel stigmatised, but also by the
healthcare staff, because we want not only patients to be safe, but the
personnel as well.

In turn, the health minister
pointed out that funding will be earmarked next for the revamping of family
physician practices:

Alexandru Rafila: We will soon
finalise all the investment contracts, both for hospital healthcare and for
outpatient facilities, including family physician practices, for which the
final stage will be soon reached, allowing for their financing, revamping and
equipment procurement.

The newly signed contracts also cover
the building of a new mother and child health facility as part of the Constanţa
Emergency Hospital, and the extension of the Municipal Polyclinic there.

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan is designed to ensure the development of Romania, by increasing its
resilience in crisis situations after the COVID-19 pandemic, and by
capitalising on the country’s economic growth potential, through major reforms
and key investments. In order to receive funding,
Member States submit their national plans to the European Commission, and
receive money in instalments, until August 2026, depending on their meeting specific benchmarks. Romania benefits
from over EUR 29 bln under this facility. (AMP)