Public hospitals in Romania are to receive, starting in March, public subsidies from the Ministry of Health for robot-assisted surgeries, Health Minister Alexandru Rogobete said on Friday.
"The programme for priority actions for robotic surgery, the programme under which the Ministry of Health directly finances public hospitals that own robots and perform robotic-surgeries is completed, will be approved once the budget for 2026 is approved, and I estimate, starting with March, public hospitals will receive funds directly from the Ministry of Health for robot-assisted surgeries," said Rogobete on a working visit to the new Neonatology ICU department of the Marie Curie Clinical Emergency Hospital for Children.
He also said that, in December 2025, the Ministry of Health made transparent and will be approved along with the new budget, for the first time in Romania, a subsidised national neonatal screening and prevention programme, with the number of biomarkers to increase from a current three to 19.
"We then discuss the area of cancer screening and prevention, and we will have the national screening programmes for breast cancer, colorectal cancer and cervical cancer, and the area of nutrition and metabolic diseases will follow, where obesity will also be included, but for the obesity component, they are in fairly advanced discussions with professional societies, but also with the industry, because I want patients with a diagnosis of obesity to be able to have their weight maintenance treatments reimbursed," the minister said.
He added that he is in the process of changing the way on-call services are built. "We are talking about a draft piece of legislation that is in progress, namely the introduction of several changes in the mechanism of on-call services; we are talking about twelve-hour on-call shifts, about the division of such shifts into several components, home guard, monitoring guard, emergency guard. (...) I opposed and I was against the 10% cut in the income of the healthcare workers, but I support the performance pay and I am (...) against those who at twelve o'clock film themselves in private hospitals performing surgeries, when they are during working hours," said Rogobete.
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