Protest meeting organized at Bucharest by COPAC Federation
November 9th, 2009
Coalition of Organizations for Patients with Chronic Disseases from Romania (COPAC) , organized today a protest meeting in front of the Parliament Palace.
The Coalition's members, representing over 40.000 chronic patients in Romania, wanted to draw attention to the politicians and especially to the Ministry of Health and Special Commissions within the Senate and Chamber of Deputies on the unprecedented desperate situation faced by patients with cancer, chronic hepatitis, diabetes, hemophilia and also people living with HIV/AIDS.
These people's lives depend on the medical treatment that has to be followed on an ongoing basis. Considering the lack of the first line medicines or ARV, the immune modulators for patients with transplant or specific therapy that hemophilia patients follow, these people health worsens more rapidly.
The ones who attended the meeting stated for media that these protest is their last solution as a consequence of many interventions and requests submitted to the medical authorities, all of them ended up with no answer or viable solution to ensure the treatment.
COPAC states that in many cases is not about the lack of necessary funds but of a bad funds' management. Therefore requests a parliamentary commission for investigation.
Among the attendees to the protest were also people living with HIV/AIDS, members of the National Union of Organizations of People Infected / Affected by HIV/AIDS (UNOPA).
The chronic patients won't give up the protest, although today none of the state representative had stopped by to talk to the attendees of the protest. Their appeal, "...We don't want to die, we want to live!..." will probably reach the ears of the politicians through mass media who witnessed the protest.
We shall wait to see when and if there will be found a solution to the problem that holds thousands of lives …
