Health Minister Alexandru Rogobete declared on Friday that six children under the age of one who were hospitalized at the 'Sfânta Maria' Children's Hospital in Iasi have died in recent days, having been infected with the 'Serratia Marcescens' bacteria.

'From the data we have at our disposal, at this moment, we are discussing nine patients under the age of one year infected with this bacterium - Serratia - of which, up to this moment, six deaths have been recorded. From the medical data currently available, made available to the Ministry of Health, we cannot establish a direct medical link between the associated infections and the other pathologies or comorbidities of the patients. The direct causal link will be established by forensic experts and I do not want to speculate or prejudge,' declared the Minister of Health in an intervention on Digi24.

He said that the other three children infected with the Serratia Marcescens bacteria are in stable hemodynamic condition. Two remained hospitalized in Ia?i, and the third was transferred to the 'Marie Curie' Children's Emergency Clinical Hospital in Bucharest.

At the same time, Alexandru Rogobete specified that he had sent the Control Body of the Ministry of Health and the State Sanitary Inspection to Ia?i.

'From the data I have, the first infection appeared on September 13, but it was reported to the Ia?i DSP with a delay by the health unit, only on September 19, when there were already four infected patients at the hospital level. Our data shows that the hospital did not take the necessary measures in time, for isolation at the intensive care unit level and did not transmit the information and reports in a timely manner to the DSP, according to the legislation in force. We have now urgently ordered a joint control in which the head of the Control Body of the Ministry of Health and the head of the State Sanitary Inspection of the Ministry of Health will participate, who will urgently travel to Ia?i together with the technical teams of the Ministry of Health to assess the situation,' said Minister Rogobete.

Meanwhile, the Iasi DSP fined the hospital epidemiologist 10,000 lei for failing to comply with legal provisions in the control of nosocomial infections, the ICU doctor the same amount for failing to comply with protocols, and the hospital 50,000 RON, also for failing to comply with protocols.

Also, the temporary closure of building A of the hospital's ICU ward was ordered, until the current epidemiological context is resolved, and the visiting schedule in both buildings of the ward was modified.

'I have ordered the Control Body to have a final control report by next week, Wednesday at the latest, and, if necessary, I will certainly dismiss both the director of the Iasi DSP and the director of the health unit, and all the people involved will be sanctioned accordingly. It is unacceptable that in a pediatric hospital, in a pediatric ICU, neonatology department, these situations are not reported and that specific measures are not taken, in 2025 and yet in a context in which, for several months, we have been periodically discussing new protocols and new measures to limit infections associated with medical activity,' the Minister of Health declared.

According to data provided by DSP Iasi for AGERPRES, in the first quarter of this year, 75 cases of routine nosocomial infections were reported at the children's hospital, of which 38 at the pediatric clinic, 9 at Surgery and 28 at ICU.

In the second quarter, 87 routine nosocomial infections were reported at the same medical unit, of which 27 at the pediatric clinic, 21 at Surgery and 36 at ICU.

In July, 26 routine nosocomial infections were reported, 17 of which were in the ICU, five in the pediatric clinic, and four in the surgical clinic.AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Gabriel Apetrii, editing by: Irina Poenaru; EN - writing by: Catalin Cristian Trandafir)