In April 2020, during the first phase of the pandemic, Romania was confronted with the highest number of corona infections and deaths in all of Europe. Not only because of suspicion about the vaccine. But there was also simply too little healthcare staff to care for patients.
According to the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW), between 2010 and 2018 no other European country lost so many doctors to other (European) countries. Gheorge Borcean, director of the Order of Romanian Doctors, estimates the number of doctors that left at 14,000, more than a quarter of all Romanian doctors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Romania takes the lead within Europe in terms of avoidable mortality: 2.5 times the average in the rest of Europe.
The WHO calculates a current worldwide gap of 17 million health workers, of whom 2.6 million are medical doctors and 9 million are nurses and midwives. In all European countries this shortage is felt, but not everywhere with the same intensity, since EU Member States in the south and east of Europe are source countries for other European countries. This leads to higher shortages in those countries (and also in low and middle income countries outside Europe).
