Protesters hold signs reading "You have diluted our health" in Bucharest. PAimages/Vadim Ghirda. All rights reserved.Just over a month ago a Romanian pharmaceutical company, Hexi Pharma, was caught selling watered-down hospital disinfectants throughout the country at a marked up price. Some products were diluted to one-tenth of the strength stated on the bottles - making them incapable of killing lethal bacteria.
The sham disinfectants were used by Romanian forces in Afghanistan, and in emergency hospitals where victims were taken after a deadly fire at a Bucharest nightclub last October, a blaze that claimed 27 lives at the scene and 37 in the days and weeks following. Many died in public hospitals from hospital-contracted infections; which led journalists at Gazeta Sporturilor to investigate hospital supplies and to uncover Hexi Pharma’s fraud.
The chief executive of the shamed company, Dan Condrea, drove his car into a tree and died - in a suspected suicide - the day before he was due to for questioning by prosecutors on May 22. Hexi Pharma had over 350 contracts to supply hospitals across Romania - a fact that has rattled public confidence in a notably corrupt health system.
