The Foundation For The Defense Of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) calls on the Minister of Health to amend the draft law currently under public debate, which aims to amend and supplement Law 200/2004, in which FACIAS has identified several discriminatory measures that violate the constitutional rights of both health care employees and their patients.
The draft changes the retirement age of doctors to 67 years, regardless of gender (Article 11 of the draft law put up for public debate by the Ministry of Health). This would make doctors the professional category with the highest retirement age in Romania. The measure is discriminatory and does not take into account a differentiated age between women and men, setting a single age of 67, which is 4 years higher for women and 2 years higher for men, compared to the retirement age generally set at 63 for women and 65 for men.
The initiative also infringes the constitutional rights to life and health of both doctors and patients, especially as it is now well known that the number of on-calls and the heavy workload has caused many deaths among health professionals at ages much younger than the 67 years set as the retirement age in the draft law in question. In most cases, the deaths of health professionals have been caused by stress, fatigue, the number of on-call hours worked in a month due to an increase in the number of patients and a decrease in the number of doctors. This proves that maintaining the retirement age of 67 for doctors increases the risk of their death even while on duty, but also renders the medical care provided by the doctor to patients ineffective and will therefore endanger the lives of patients.
The same draft amendment to Law 200/2004, put up for public debate by the Ministry of Health, establishes the list of specialisations under which physiotherapists can be recognised, omitting the specialisation ''Physical Education and Sport''. This exclusion violates several legal principles and regulations:
• the legal principle that a right once won cannot be annulled by another law,
• the principle of retroactivity of a law,
• the right to work guaranteed by the Romanian Constitution.
This omission creates flagrant discrimination between people who do the same work but have different titles in their educational documents because of the way the education system was organised at the time of graduation. Basically, with this amendment, the Romanian state will no longer recognise the professional training and competence of thousands of people who currently have decades of professional activity in this field.
They will no longer be able to receive the right to practice, becoming victims of a movement that could perpetuate for each liberal profession.
FACIAS considers that the analysis, completion and amendment of Law 200/2004 is a priority in the effort to respect the constitutional rights of health care workers and their patients.
ANNEXED - draft law put up for public debate by the Ministry of Health