Story By: Sergiu Nazaru, Sub Editor:  Joseph Golder,  Agency: Newsflash

A heartbroken Romanian man has apparently killed himself after his mother was not properly treated by a local hospital struggling to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, and later died.

The man’s 49-year-old mum, Gabriela Varzaru, had gone to Craiova County Hospital with chest pains where medics told her that she was not ill, and suggested that she was complaining too much.

They sent her back home saying all she had was “trivial neuralgia”, but three hours later she died from acute pancreatitis.

A short while later, her son George Varzaru’s lifeless body was found in an alleyway in the Brazda lui Novac neighbourhood in the city of Craiova in southern Romania’s Dolj county.

Police determined that he had fallen from the 5th floor of a nearby block of flats and have categorised it as a suicide after hearing from his relatives that he was devastated at the loss of his mother.

According to local media outlet Gandul.ro, the family relatives said: “He could not bear the death of his mother.”

They added: “He was by his mother’s side until the end. He worshipped her. She died in his arms. He could simply not stand the loss.”

Due to the pandemic situation, many services in other areas in Romanian hospitals are reduced or have been lumped together in specialist wards, as more facilities and staff are dedicated only for COVID-19 patients.

Alis Grasu, the Bucharest-Ilfov Ambulance Service manager, said that because of COVID-19, in the last 10 days they had almost 50 percent more callouts.

The Romanian authorities reported 4,013 new Covid-19 cases and 73 deaths as of 15th October. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 168,490 cases of people infected with the new coronavirus have been confirmed in Romania.

In the specialized health units, the total number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 is currently 9,611 at the time of writing. Of these, 721 are hospitalized at the Intensive Care Units.

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