The only woman at the table
By Katarina Breceljova and Catrien Spijkerman
As minister, it is up to Florica Bagdasar to get the Romanian healthcare system back on track; a sheer impossible task. She doesn’t let political sensitivities hold her back though and gets right to it. It is not received well.
In 1946, Florica Bagdasar has just lost her husband, when there is a knocking at the door. Two politicians have come to tell her that she is to succeed her husband as Minister of Health. Having witnessed her husband’s challenges first hand, her initial reaction is to refuse. The Second World War has left Romania in a deep healthcare crisis with famine, typhus outbreaks and widespread resurgence of malaria. Hospitals are a mess and have to deal with shortages of just about everything: from medication to food and from staff to medical equipment.
A few weeks later she receives yet another notice: the next morning she is expected to travel to the Paris Peace Conference to join the negotiations on behalf of Romania. When she meets the rest of the Romanian delegation, she is shocked to see she is the only woman among all the ministers and high-ranking people. She quickly pulls herself together though and gets to work.
She uses the conference to get to know the right people. It doesn’t take her long to find out that Sweden is the country that might be able to help her. So off to Stockholm she goes where she petitions an official request for help. She arranges medication, medical instruments, clothes, food and staff for the Romanian hospitals. Back in Bucharest, she is officially appointed as the first ever female minister of Romania. There is no time for her to doubt. There is work to be done.
She is way ahead of her time
Bagdasar is the right person for the job. As a young woman, she studies medicine and later moves to the United States with her husband Dumitru to specialise in neurosurgery at the prestigious Harvard University. After their return to Rumania in 1929, Dumitru starts performing brain surgeries under extremely challenging conditions, always assisted by his wife. The couple gains fame with operations no other surgeon would dare perform. In 1933, they start the first neurosurgery clinic in the country.
But Florica Bagdasar isn’t the kind of woman that only assists her husband. Inspired by the birth of her daughter and her studies in the US, she immerses herself in juvenile mental health and is at the base of child psychiatry in Romania.
Until then, children with behavioural or developmental issues are put in orphanages or special schools, which are basically charitable organisations without any scientific basis. In Bucharest in 1946, she starts the first scientific centre for children with neurological and psychiatric problems. There are teams of psychologists, pedagogues, physiotherapists and speech therapists. She doesn’t only treat the symptoms, but rather the child as a whole. She is way ahead of her time.
‘Let go of the idea’
But now she finds herself a minister in a country where children are starving and more than half the population – in some regions even up to ninety percent – has malaria. Bagdasar launches an anti-malaria campaign that requires a reorganisation of the entire local healthcare system. In many isolated villages along the Danube, basic hygiene rules are introduced. People are taught to boil drinking water, disinfect water wells, use mosquito nets and treat wounds properly.
Meanwhile, the famine in the Soviet Moldova region is reaching catastrophic proportions. Bagdasar realises her country cannot solve this on its own and asks the communist authorities to request help from America. They react dismissively: ‘Our great Soviet friends have been destroyed by the war and cannot help us, and we are not going to embarrass ourselves in front of the Americans. Let go of the idea.’ But Bagdasar insists and the authorities give in. American president Truman donates tons of beans and other food supplies.
Then, in the summer of 1948, while she is visiting villages for her anti-malaria campaign, she randomly hears on the radio news that she has been fired. She gets no explanation for her discharge. But Bagdasar understands that her education in America and her contacts with American diplomats must have raised suspicion among the new communist leadership which had been reformed under Soviet supervision.
She ‘made up’ handicaps
Bagdasar is in shock. She never chose this job, but had given it her all to build up the post-war healthcare system in Romania. And she is far from done. Still, she quietly accepts the decision and starts working in her centre for juvenile psychiatry.
The authorities don’t leave her alone and Bagdasar is interrogated and threatened. The smear campaign against her reaches a peak when a scathing newspaper article about her is published in January 1953. An official delegation pays a visit to her centre for juvenile psychiatry directly after the publication. Several ‘grave shortcomings’ are discovered. Bagdasar is made to resign and hand over all files and keys. She is said to have ‘made up’ handicapped children. Handicaps don’t fit the image of a socialist utopia full of exemplary workers.
Florica Bagdasar has no income, has nothing to do and is no longer welcome anywhere. A long period of illness follows. When in 1956 a milder political wind starts blowing, she is rehabilitated. The party even offers to reinstate her membership, but Bagdasar refuses. For a short while she works as vice-president of the Romanian Red Cross, but other than that she leads a secluded life until her death in 1978.
