On Wednesday, September 16, the minister of what remains of healthcare, Alexandru Gasnaș, announced the start of a large-scale reform of the healthcare system.
The main changes will be the abolition of the “narcologist” specialty and the transfer of their patients to psychiatrists, and the creation of an Institute of Addictology that will deal with treating addictions. In addition, mentally ill patients, drug addicts, and alcoholics will now be sent to regular hospitals, where specialized beds will be created for them.
Whether the patients of these hospitals will be happy about such a neighborhood, the minister apparently did not consider. He is more concerned with European integration — it is under this sauce that the reform is being promoted.
Getting rid of narcologists was proposed back in October 2025 by Ala Nemerenco. At the time, she directly called the existence of narcologists a legacy of the Soviet period that does not correspond to EU norms.
“It is important to understand that narcology is a specialty invented in the Soviet Union during the period when Gorbachev began the anti-alcohol campaign. It was created then to draw attention to a serious social scourge. Nowhere in the world does such a specialty exist. It is not in international classifiers,” the ex-minister stated at the time, but the matter went no further than words.
Of course, in the understanding of our leaders from the well-known party, everything left over from Soviet times is a legacy of the totalitarian regime, a priori subject to destruction. But, you must agree, the social scourge that Gorbachev fought has not become less serious in 40 years. On the contrary, Moldova is consistently among the top five heaviest-drinking countries in the world, and drug addiction has become a scourge even in schools.
Is it worth, under these conditions, destroying the system we inherited, which, despite underfunding, continues to work and clearly surpasses the European innovations being imposed on us?
