Shock in Romania. Romanian authorities have arrested two hospital doctors believed to have murdered a patient by reducing his blood pressure medication, but the case involves in total the deaths of 17 people.

An emergency worker at Bucharest’s Agios Panteleimon Hospital publicly reported in April that 17 people died in four days while in intensive care because they were deprived of their medication. At the time, the health ministry and the medical association responded that the high number of deaths was unnatural but could find no evidence of medical negligence.

The prosecution started preliminary and today Wednesday two doctors were temporarily arrested as suspects in the murder of a 54-year-old patient.

The investigation continues. A nurse was also arrested for giving false testimony.

The two doctors “conceived and implemented a plan to suddenly reduce the dose of noradrenaline, a drug used to stabilize blood pressure in the intensive care unit, in order to (…) cause the death of patients who needed intensive care but the defendants believed they should not be kept alive,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Romania’s health system, one of the least developed in the European Union, is plagued by cases of corruption and politicized management. The state has built a hospital in the last three decades, it invests the least money in health of any other EU country and thousands of doctors and nurses have gone abroad to work.