By their nature, health issues go beyond the limits of the borders between countries. The ROHU 401 HEARTS & LIVES project provides all conditions for a joint approach of health-related needs emerging on both sides of the border. Three renowned institutions in Romania and Hungary, the Timişoara Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, the County Emergency Clinical Hospital in Oradea, and the University of Debrecen have joined their efforts to lower the incidence of cardiovascular and gynecological diseases in the region and to efficiently deal with them.
Since 2015, the incidence of ischemic cardiomyopathy and heart failure cases have been increasing every year in the western part of Romania. This is why the services provided by the Timişoara Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases have become paramount for the entire region. Due to the funding awarded through the Interreg V-A Romania-Hungary Programme, the equipment of healthcare units has improved and new surgery programs have been initiated.
The medical director of the Institute, Mrs. Adina Bucur, MD, explains to us the importance of these investments. “This project aims to sterilize the cardiology departments and to equip two surgery rooms (within the operating theater) with medical devices. Our purpose is to expand the current capacity to provide healthcare for the adult population, as well as to initiate a pediatric heart surgery program.
Specifically, this new equipment for the two operating rooms, allow for an increase by 30% of the number of surgical procedures performed, that means approximately 250 more surgical interventions per year.”
Hearts&Lives also supports some other categories of patients. In the County Emergency Clinical Hospital in Oradea, the future mothers as well as patients suffering from various gynecology-related illnesses now benefit from optimal treatment conditions. “This project has allowed us to equip an operating theater, an Intensive Care Unit and 10 hospital wards with a total of 30 beds with state-of-art equipment, for the patients of the Obstetrics-Gynecology Department,” told us the manager of the hospital, Mr. Gheorghe Carp, MD. The cooperation with Hungarian experts leads to a swift solution in many complicated cases. “For us, these cross-border projects represented an extraordinary opportunity. We have been cooperating for more than eight years with the University of Debrecen, we have implemented quite a great deal of projects together and the clinical experience was beneficial especially in areas such as neurology, cardiovascular surgery, interventional cardiology or gynecology”, Mr. Carp concluded.
The main investment of the project in Hungary is represented by the procurement of some important medical equipment for the University of Debrecen. It is a complex ultrasound system, which is adequate for complex health exams for women, a Plasma Jet surgery system developed to capitalize on the unique properties of the pure plasma energy, a surgery table, a premium cardiovascular ultrasound system featuring a full range of 3D imagery and analysis. Following this project, the inhabitants of Hajdú-Bihar, Timiş, and Bihor counties benefit from improved healthcare services due to the actions taken to identify early signs of illnesses and as a result of the exchange of knowledge among experts. On both sides of the border, the investments and the exchange of experience among doctors provide access to state-of-art treatments for more than 1.6 million patients in the Timiş, Bihor, and Hajdú-Bihar counties, in the 7 healthcare departments that are modernized through this project.
The project was successfully completed. A closing conference took place in Oradea, on the 22nd of July 2021, at the premises of Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital Oradea.
