Eight months after the tragic death of Andrei Marius Drăgan, the 16-year-old teenager who died following a series of serious medical errors at the Târgu Jiu County Emergency Hospital, none of the doctors involved have been brought to trial. The criminal investigation is at a standstill, and the medical staff involved in the case continue to practice. The Foundation For The Defense Of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) is raising awareness about this dangerous institutional tolerance, which encourages getting away with crimes and puts patients' lives at risk.
Although the criminal investigation was initially blocked due to the lack of histopathological examination results and subsequently due to the delay in issuing the toxicology report by the INML, both documents having been submitted to the case file in the meantime, the criminal case has not yet been finalized by bringing the persons responsible to trial.
In the context of the investigation that has been stalled for more than eight months, FACIAS asked the Târgu Jiu County Emergency Hospital how many doctors had been suspended in the last 10 years following the launch of malpractice investigations. "There have been no such cases," the hospital management officially stated in response to FACIAS' request. In other words, between 2015 and 2025, no doctor at the Târgu Jiu facility was suspended, regardless of the severity of the allegations or the consequences of the medical act.
The case of Andrei Drăgan is not an exception, but a painful expression of a system that refuses to take responsibility. The absence of real sanctions and institutional protection measures for patients fosters a dangerous climate of indifference and bureaucratic self-defense.
FACIAS is sounding the alarm about the need to adopt a legal procedure similar to that applied to magistrates, who can be suspended from office by the Superior Council of Magistrates during disciplinary investigations. In its current form, the law provides for only two exceptional situations, which are very rare in practice, in which a doctor can be suspended from office: when the hospital management files a criminal complaint against him or when the doctor is prosecuted for criminal acts incompatible with the practice of his profession.