# Atlas of Medical Deserts

*Marius Comper · 9 September 2026 · [Interactive version](https://mariuscomper.uk/deserturi-medicale/en/) · [Ediția în română](https://mariuscomper.uk/deserturi-medicale/)*

In 2024, Romania had 34.0 doctors per 10,000 residents, up from 21.2 in 2004 — a rise of nearly two-thirds in twenty years. The national figure hides a vast distance between places: towns have 56.4 doctors per 10,000 residents, communes 5.8, almost ten times fewer. 315 localities lost their last doctor over this period and have reported none for at least two years, and 566 of the localities that already existed before 2003 have never had a pharmacy or a hospital. The interactive version shows, for each of Romania's 3,181 localities, how many doctors, family doctors, dentists, pharmacies and hospital beds it has per 10,000 residents, today and twenty years ago.

- **56.4 · 5.8**: doctors per 10,000 residents in towns and communes, in 2024.
- **315** localities with no doctor in 2023 and 2024, despite having had at least one from 2004 onward.
- **27** localities whose medical staff went, in twenty years, from entirely public to entirely private.
- **566** long-standing localities that have never had a pharmacy or a hospital, since 1995.

## What grew and what stood still

From 2004 to 2024, doctors per 10,000 residents rose from 21.2 to 34.0, most of the growth coming in the last decade. Dentists grew even faster, from 4.4 to 9.7 per 10,000, more than double; pharmacies from 2.1 to 3.9. Family doctors are the different story: from 5.1 per 10,000 in 2004 to just 5.8 in 2024, a rise of under 15%. The layer of care designed precisely to cover the territory evenly is the only one that hasn't kept pace with the rest of the system. Hospital beds for continuous care stayed nearly unchanged: 62.8 per 10,000 in 2004, a low of 58.6 in 2014, 62.6 in 2024.

Towns already had a much higher rate than communes in 2004, and the gap hasn't narrowed: 56.4 against 5.8 doctors per 10,000 residents in 2024; for dentists, 15.5 against 2.4. Family doctors are almost the only category without this concentration: 7.1 in towns, 4.1 in communes.

## From 11 to 86

The doctor rate by county runs from 11.1 per 10,000 residents in Vaslui to 85.8 in Bucharest, nearly eightfold. The bottom of the list is almost entirely counties without a large university city with an emergency hospital; the top corresponds to counties whose seats are cities with clinical hospitals and medical schools.

| County | Doctors per 10,000 | Residents |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Vaslui | 11.1 | 509,726 |
| Dâmbovița | 12.1 | 504,683 |
| Călărași | 12.2 | 294,334 |
| Giurgiu | 12.7 | 258,527 |
| Ialomița | 13.6 | 275,751 |
| … | … | … |
| Cluj | 60.7 | 744,031 |
| Timiș | 79.2 | 762,776 |
| București | 85.8 | 2,143,578 |

## The localities that lost their last doctor

315 localities had at least one doctor in some year between 2004 and 2022, but report none in either 2023 or 2024 — two years running with zero, the strongest signal an annual series can show about a practice that closed or a doctor never replaced. Among the most populated: Arbore (Suceava, 8,173 residents, last doctor in 2019), Păltiniș (Botoșani, 5,836, 2022), Sângeru (Prahova, 5,481, 2020).

## From public to private, without disappearing

In 64 localities with at least six doctors in 2004, the share employed by the state fell by at least 40 percentage points by 2024, while the total doctor count stayed at least at 70% of its twenty-years-ago level. In 27 of them, medical staff flipped completely: from 100% public employees to 100% private — among them Sânpetru (Brașov), Valu lui Traian (Constanța), Miercurea Nirajului and Sărmașu (Mureș).

## The localities that serve more than themselves

18 localities with under 4,000 residents have their own rate of at least 25 doctors per 10,000, inflated by a hospital or medical centre drawing patients from the wider area. Add the neighbours' population and doctors, and the rate more than halves in every case — for example Brăduleț (Argeș), from 68.9 to 11.8. INS counts staff at the institution's registered address, not by where patients come from.

## 566 localities with no pharmacy and no hospital

Among localities that already existed before the 2003–2006 reorganisation, 566 have never reported a pharmacy or a hospital, from 1995 to 2024 — some with close to 5,000 residents, like Smârdan (Galați) or Ripiceni (Botoșani).

## Method and sources

All data comes from the [TEMPO-Online](http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/#/pages/tables/insse-table) database of Romania's National Institute of Statistics, downloaded in full for all 3,181 localities on 8-9 September 2026: SAN104B (medical staff, 1990–2024), SAN101B (pharmacies and hospitals, as units, 1995–2025), SAN102C (hospital beds, 1990–2025), POP107D (population, 1992–2026). A missing year in a series means zero, not a data gap. The twenty-year comparison uses 2004 and 2024. Locality outlines come from the "UAT, Romania (polygon)" dataset by geo-spatial.org, based on ANCPI data, CC BY-SA 4.0. Full detail in the interactive version.

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*[Interactive version](https://mariuscomper.uk/deserturi-medicale/en/) · [Ediția în română](https://mariuscomper.uk/deserturi-medicale/)*