Since 1990, these two transplant centers have completed 70 heart transplant operations. At present there is an impressively long waiting list, with thousands of Romanians hoping for a chance to a new life: over 3,000 people need kidney transplant at the moment, another 400 are waiting for liver transplant, and at least 60 need new hearts.

The figures registered for the first months of 2013 are comparable to those in other European countries, says Victor Zota, national coordinator of the Transplant Agency, after Romania lingered for years at the bottom of the European standings in terms of the number of donors.

Victor Zota: “There is a spectacular development of transplant activities, thanks to the involvement of a larger number of hospitals in Romania. Those who deserve all the credit for this are the transplant coordinators and the anesthesiologists working in these intensive care departments. The Public Health Ministry has acknowledged this performance, and although at present funding is rather scarce, I have their firm promise that in the forthcoming budget adjustment things will return to normal and we will have no financing problems.”

A high increase rate for transplant activities implicitly means shorter waiting lists, says Professor Irinel Popescu, Ph.D., head of the Fundeni Liver Transplant Centre:

Irinel Popescu: “This year, in five months only two of the patients on the liver transplant waiting list died, which is an incredibly small number. We started out with a waiting list death rate of close to 40%, then the rate gradually dropped to 20%, and this year we’ve only had two deaths. Things are beginning to sound quite good.”

Unfortunately, a lot of problems are still unanswered, and one of them is the activity of the Cardiology Institute in Targu Mures, which was dismantled two years ago. This has severely disrupted the heart transplant activity in Romania, and most of the Institute’s highly specialized staff left the country, although cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in Romania. According to the National Transplant Agency, in 2013 the Health Ministry earmarked less money to transplants than last year, but Minister Eugen Nicolaescu says that funding will be increased if necessary.