Romania has only 380 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants, below the Western European average

Romania is among the European countries with the fewest doctors relative to its population, according to Eurostat data: 380 doctors per hundred thousand inhabitants. By comparison, in Western Europe the number of specialists serving the same volume of patients is considerably higher, averaging between 400 and 450 per hundred thousand inhabitants.

The situation becomes even more worrying when we look at the distribution across regions and specialities. The vast majority of doctors in Romania work in large cities that are also university centres — Bucureşti, Cluj-Napoca, Iaşi, Târgu-Mureş — whilst the rest of the country is left with a significant shortage of medical staff.

A concrete example is paediatrics: of the 3,000 paediatric doctors across the entire country, a quarter practise in Bucureşti. The same pattern is repeated in oncology, where half of Romania's counties have fewer than five oncologists.

The shortage of medical personnel is a chronic problem within the healthcare system, felt both in Romania and internationally. As the population ages and chronic illnesses become increasingly prevalent, the number of available doctors remains insufficient to meet all of patients' care needs.