From the investigative team: Over the last couple of years, an increasing number of patients diagnosed with cancer have moved from the Romanian public healthcare system to private clinics or toward the health-care systems of neighbouring countries. This project follows this “oncotourism” or “cancer tourism” to understand how the Eastern and Central European public healthcare system and cancer treatment systems are connected. It seeks to highlight the main points of healthcare inequalities in the cancer treatment systems as well as gain insight into the increasingly important and empowered private cancer treatment industry, investigate the questionable efficiency of EU funds in this area, and highlight the functioning or non-functioning of the public healthcare systems of certain EU member states.
We faced serious data harvesting drawbacks during this project in both Hungary and Romania. The Hungarian authorities did not answer our data requests – there is an alarming lack of transparency in this field. The Romanian National Insurance House released only partial data, meaning there is no exact information about the public financing of private companies.
The results of this investigation are being published by the Hungarian investigative news website Átlátszó.hu and on a radio series from the Romanian Public Broadcasting Company – Marosvásárhelyi Rádió.
Published content:
English:
- Pay or die? Onco-tourism and corruption in Romania and Hungary (Átlátszó.hu, Jan. 28, 2019)
Hungarian:
- Onkoturizmus Kelet-Közép-Európában: kirándulás élet és halál között a román-magyar határon (Átlátszó.hu, Jan. 7, 2019)
- Onkoturizmus Kelet-Közép Európában: biztosítási játszmák és harc a túlélésért (Átlátszó.hu, Jan. 16, 2019
Radio broadcasts:
The project is publishing a one-year long reporting series on Romanian Public Broadcasting Company – Marosvásárhelyi Rádió. The first entries are included here:
- Onkológia és korrupció: a betegutak hálójában. 1. rész (Part 1 of Series on Romanian Public Broadcasting Company – Marosvásárhelyi Rádió)
- Onkológia és korrupció – A betegutak hálójában 2. (Part 2 of Series on Romanian Public Broadcasting Company – Marosvásárhelyi Rádió)
- Onkológia és korrupció – A betegutak hálójában 3. (Part 3 of Series on Romanian Public Broadcasting Company – Marosvásárhelyi Rádió)
The information on this page is supplied by the investigative team. The IJ4EU fund partners are not involved in the editorial process of any funded project.