The Save Romania Union (USR) is calling on the government to dismiss Health Minister Alexandru Rafila from office, accusing him of failing to solve the problems of Romanian patients, write Agerpres.

The request came as cancer patients on Tuesday staged a protest before the Government House demanding the implementation of the National Cancer Beating Plan voted by Parliament for almost a year. According to a press release issued by USR, Rafila „bregs that he has issued all the necessary pieces of legislation,” but the rules related to the Cancer Beating Plan have not been implemented, as there are no registries , and the necessary medicines cannot be found in pharmacies or hospitals.

„USR is once again demanding that Health Minister Alexandru Rafila be dismissed from office, that the right to life of cancer patients in Romania be observed, and that the implementation of the National Cancer Beating Plan be sped up with another health minister, as the plan was voted unanimously by the Romanian Parliament,” USR lawmaker Emanuel Ungureanu is quoted as saying. USR lawmaker Adrian Wiener says that the cancer beating plan is „just a moment of insulting political grandiosity” and that „nothing has changed” in the oncology network in Romania.

„There is no screening or early detection; access to medication has not improved, on the contrary, even access to palliation has deteriorated. National programmes, including oncology ones, have remained without funding. In the country with the lowest cancer survival rate in the European Union, in the country with the highest preventable mortality rate, in the country where people die barbarically and undignified, the incompetence and carelessness of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and minister Rafila continues to wreak lives,” Wiener is also quoted as saying.

The Declic community on Tuesday staged a protest before the Government House in support of cancer patients. As many as 153 body bags standing for cadavers were laid out in Victoriei Square symbolising the number of people who die of cancer every day in Romania as the National Cancer Beating Plan „is blocked by the government.”