BIPAI's pediatric AIDS center in Romania grows up

HOUSTON -- (December 6, 2007) -- A center that opened in Romania in 2001 to help young children with HIV/AIDS survive for longer periods is now adapting to its success with an expanded focus of caring for the adult needs of these individuals.

This week, formal ceremonies were held to dedicate the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative's Romanian Clinical Center of Excellence. The center is a joint program of the Infectious Diseases Hospital Constanta, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital.

"We are adapting to changing needs," said Dr. Mark Kline, president of BIPAI, professor of pediatrics at BCM and chief of the retrovirology clinic at Texas Children's. "We are dealing with issues today that we couldn't have imagined a decade ago. At the time, we were just concerned with keeping the children alive for another month, another year. And today, we find that the HIV care is a relatively minor part of what we are doing. We are much more involved with primary medical and psychosocial needs."

BIPAI opened the state-of-the-art Romanian-American Children's Center in 2001, with funding support from the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word and Abbott Laboratories, to provide outpatient care to the hundreds of HIV-infected children in the area. At the time, the situation was grim, with children dying at a high rate.

As a result of the center, the mortality rate dropped from 15 percent in 2001 to 1 percent in 2006.

Now many of those children are in their late teens and early 20s, with different issues to face. Kline said the decision was made to transition the program, rather than transition the patients away from the center to an adult program.

"We're choosing to expand our own range of services to accommodate the entire age range from infancy to adulthood," Kline said. "We will continue to provide medical and psychosocial services to these individuals, but we're also going to tackle issues like housing and job training, education and subjects surrounding marriage and family."

The Center of Excellence will provide services under the same roof, including programs in infectious diseases, pulmonary diseases, gynecology and dental care; psychosocial and vocational counseling, social assistance, family planning and support groups; and education for healthy independent living.

The Center also will educate and train health professionals and develop a research department.

Sustaining funding for the Center of Excellence is provided by the Abbott Fund.

Kline was joined at the dedication ceremonies by BIPAI vice-presidents Nancy Calles, Michael Mizwa, David Jones and Sebastian Wanless; Ana Maria Schweitzer, executive director of BIPAI's Baylor-Black Sea Foundation; Dr. Sorin Rugina, manager of the Constanta Infectious Diseases Hospital; and Dr. Suzan Ibram, an official with the Public Health Authority of Constanta, as well as other government officials, members of the BIPAI team, BCM and Texas Children's representatives.

A special guest at the dedication was Dr. Gabriel Anabwani, executive director of the Botswana Baylor Children's Center of Excellence. The Romanian clinic served as a model for the Botswana clinic, which opened in 2002. BIPAI now operates seven centers of excellence in Africa, along with the Romanian center.

Kline and the BIPAI team also participated in the dedication of a new housing complex that includes the Flower House, a program that houses and teaches independent living skills to abandoned or orphaned HIV-infected adolescents, and the Baylor Habitat House, three studio apartments for those who are now independent adults.

The 8GB Sony Ericsson W960i Now in Romania

The long-awaited high-end UMTS handset, is finally available in Romania, as of today. W960i combines the qualities of an excellent phone with the ones of a high performance media player into one good-looking device that can satisfy any user’s communication and entertainment needs.

With its 8GB on-board memory, the W960i candybar proudly stands beside Apple’s iPhone and Nokia’s N81 and N95 models, providing the same huge storing capacity, enough for no less than 8,000 songs. The handset has a 2.6 inch color TFT Touchscreen, ideal for videos, games and web navigation (with the pre-installed Opera Mini browser). A 3.2 Megapixel camera with auto-focus is included to offer users good quality photos, comparable with the ones taken with some phones from Sony Ericsson’s Cyber-shot line. Morever, with the phone’s MMS and email capabilities, photos can be shared imediately with friends or family.

Sony Ericsson W960i is 3G and Wi-Fi enabled, thus providing excellent Internet capabilities. Being a music phone, W960i is equipped with a Walkman Touch player, FM radio and two headsets (one of them being the latest Bluetooth HBH-DS220). The handset can provide a total playing time of up to 27 hours.

“Market enthusiasm for the Walkman phone range has far outshone even our own expectations”, says Miles Flint, Sony Ericsson President. “With lifetime global sales standing at over 26.5 million Walkman phones and users really understanding the benefits of ‘music on your mobile’, the time is right to release the next album! This means Walkman phones that make it quicker and easier to transfer or download music, plus innovative ways of searching through all of those tracks. It’s also about thinking beyond music, to games, videos and the Web.”

Sony Ericsson W960i’s availability is great news for the Romanian mobile market, as it’s a phone that stands out and can compete with any other high-end multimedia handset. Its price is unknown yet, but it will be revealed pretty soon.

CEZ Romania announces massive layoffs at Electrica Oltenia

CEZ Romania, the local arm of the Czech energy group CEZ, owning in Romania the electricity distributor Electrica Oltenia since 2005, is to send home 300 employees next year with a view to restructure the company, president Jan Veskrna said today.

He said the company, whose workforce accounts for some 3,000 people, has way too many employees compared to other firms involved in similar businesses in the other EU countries and ruled out any economic motivation for these layoffs.

Veskrna said the other foreign companies operating in the power sector in Romania, namely Enel and E.ON., owners of former Electrica Moldova, and Electrica Banat Dobrogea respectively, are also considering trimming their workforce.

CEZ Romania voiced in late July this year its interest to get involved in the building process of reactors no. 3 and 4 in Romania’s sole nuclear plant in Cernavoda.

Networx expands into Romania

The Bulgarian alternative telco Networx is reported to have established a presence in neighbouring Romania. Basing itself in the city of Giurgiu, it will offer triple play services as in its home market. Networx was founded in 2000 and claims to be the largest provider in Northeast Bulgaria. It launched Networx-TV, an analogue TV solution employing FTTB technology, in September this year. It also introduced IPTV and web-TV services in the same month. According to the company, it invested over $2 million (€1.36 million) on its infrastructure in 2006.

Romania's booming IT sector

Romania looms as the next offshore tech powerhouse with its low costs, language proficiency, burgeoning infrastructure, and engineering skills

Could Romania be the next India for IT talent? Business-technology leaders in the former eastern European country hope so.

A delegation of business and technology executives from 26 Romanian companies recently exhibited at an outsourcing expo in New York to rally business from U.S. and international companies looking for offshore tech help.
Dozens of U.S. and other companies already are working with Romanian developers, including Microsoft, whose RAV AntiVirus software was developed by GeCAD Group, a coalition of five Romanian software and IT-services firms.

The average annual income for software developers in Romania is about $6,000, says Constin Lianu, general director for export promotion at the Romanian Ministry of Economy and Commerce, almost double the $3,300 average per-capita income. Software pros working for multinationals can bring in much higher paychecks. Developers working for Oracle earn the equivalent of $15,000 to $35,000 U.S., says Edund Fabian, senior development manager of Oracle’s European Development Center, which opened last year in Bucharest and employs about 300, including Fabian, who leads a development team of 10. Romania has about 45,000 software developers, and 8,000 graduates enter the field annually.

There are about 45,000 software developers in Romania and 8,000 graduates enter the field annually, Lianu says. The government is intent on expanding the ranks of IT pros, providing perks such as payroll tax exemptions. Romania is a relatively poor country, but that’s changing, Fabian says. Long plagued by political corruption, it’s cleaning up its act and is expected to join the European Union in 2007, he says. Even under Communist rule, Romanians were known for engineering skills, but in recent years many professionals left to work elsewhere. Fabian, who is 30, himself is one of the increasing number of IT pros returning. He spent seven years working in software development jobs in Ireland and The Netherlands.

Accessible Technology
To help nurture the growth of its technology industry, Romania is also developing its IT infrastructure, with broadband rollouts in rural areas and a multimillion-dollar program to subsidize the purchases of PCs for families.
Besides the cheaper labor costs, one of the biggest advantages Romania has is its multilingual workforce. Most Romanian IT professionals speak English, and many also speak French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Danish and other languages.

Disaster-recovery-software company Neverfail Group Ltd. was struck by workers’ language abilities when it chose to open a tech-support office in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, says Martin Procter, a product and services director at Neverfail. The center employs 18 IT pros who provide tech support for the company’s software. Neverfail, which also has a support center in Scotland, had investigated opening a support center in India, “which won on cost,” Procter says. However, in the end, Romanians’ strong “understanding of English” and other multilingual skills won over India’s lower costs. Procter says, “We were looking for clever young people” who had good tech skills but were not yet “programmed” or trained for a particular industry, business, or company.

Indo-Romanian trade to increase one billion dollars by 2008: Envoy

India and Romania have set a target of one billion dollars in bilateral trade in the next two years, said Romanian Ambassador Vasile Sofineti at a meeting with the economic delegation from Romania organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Tuesday. Trade has witnessed a quantum growth to around 450 million dollars in 2005, an increase of 69 percent over the previous year. This should become possible by collaborating with incredible India, Sofineti added. Chairman and Managing Director, Inapex Ltd, V K Mathur said India- Romania trade, which stagnated during 1999- 2001, is again on the upswing. In 2004, trade between the two countries grew by an impressive 103 percent as compared to 2003. Some of the items with good potential are drugs and pharmaceuticals, iron ore, machinery and instruments, iron and steel and inorganic chemicals. "We have the capabilities and capacities to diversify our trade basket to include non-traditional niche products." Many Indian companies such as Ranbaxy, Viraj Group, Ashmita Constructions have set up businesses in Romania, he said. "Till now, about 20 Indian companies have registered in Romania." Mathur said there is no dearth of new avenues in which Romanian businesses can cooperate with their Indian counterparts for trade and investment in India. New areas where both the countries can work together for mutual benefit include new frontiers such as information technology, entertainment, biotechnology and bioinformatics. There are new opportunities for investment in India in sectors as diverse as tourism and infrastructure, petrochemicals and aviation, mining and oil exploration, he said. The special economic zones recently set up in several Indian states provide internationally competitive business environment. "The Romanian industry can seriously consider the opportunities to invest in these zones and benefit from the preferential policies of the Indian government." Counselor Asia Division, Ministry of Economy and Commerce, Romania, Mr. Dorin Refca said India is considered among the top four strategic partners in Asia. The relationship between the two countries has been further strengthened with the recent visit of Traian Basescu, President of Romania in October this year. "Quite a lot of events are lined up next year in order to enhance trade between the two countries," Dorin said. Vice President, UGIR 1903, Elena Laslu said that the organization looks forward to make an agreement with CII. "We have many associations for industrial sectors in Romania to help our Indian counterparts." The meeting was followed by business to business meetings between the 16 member Romanian business delegation and members of the Indian industry. (ANI)

Payzone expansion plans might include Romania, manager says

Irish electronic payment operator Payzone Plc, Europe’s largest branded consumer payments acceptance network, recently said it was mulling over opening a Romanian branch, Reuters announced quoting the company’s executive manager, John Nagle.

The company, providing services in 21 countries, implements and operates payment networks including prepaid mobile telephone top-up, credit and debit card processing, utility and general bill payment, money transfer and stored value solutions, processing more than 540 million transactions per year.

Payzone was created in September following the merger between the Irish company Alphyra and the British card operator Cardpoint. Its shares are listed on the London stock exchange.

Nagle voiced hope Payzone was to get among the top four electronic payment players in the next two years and said the company’s plans were to expand Cardpoint on the European market as the British one is saturated.

The company is poised to invest in Germany, Poland and Romania, he was quoted as saying.

Bulgaria and Romania Consider a Single Airspace Bloc

6 December | Those flying over, to and from Romania and Bulgaria may discover their flights have become faster, safer and more punctual in the near future. The two countries are considering the creation of a single functional bloc of airspace, which will facilitate air traffic over the two countries.
The possibility for the creation of such a space is currently being evaluated by a consultant company and the analysis results will be clear by the end of the year, the Bulgarian National Radio Reported.

A single airspace bloc, which would be called Danube in this case, means that neighbouring countries agree to control their respective airspace collectively in order to provide optimal routes, without a regard for state boundaries.

The Danube airspace bloc would be part of the Single European Sky initiative, which aims to increase the safety levels of air traffic management, to unite and harmonise European airspace and to decrease delays through an increased traffic capacity.

Ancient wood, ropes discovered in Romania

The Romanian archaeologists have discovered well-preserved wood and ropes of 3,000 years old at Beclean of Romania's northern Bistrita-Nasaud County, officials said on Wednesday.

The objects, found in the bed of a highly salted river near Baile Figa, have been well preserved due to the salted mud, said Valeriu Kavruk, curator of the Museum of the Eastern Carpathians based in Sfantu Gheorghe, central Romania.

The laboratory tests with Carbon 14 showed the objects dated from 1000 B.C., Kavruk said, adding that the Figa site represents "the most important archaeological discovery in the latest decades in South-Eastern Europe."

According to the curator, the importance of such a discovery resides not only in the fact that it is for the first time that wood and ropes made of ivy that old, very well preserved too, were found but also it is highly important such objects gave an idea about how salt was dug 3,000 years ago.

The specialists concluded that the salt blocks were cut not with hard tools as nowadays, but they were melted using water and then poured through the holes in the big block of salt.

MSL to buy Romania-based seamless plant

Maharashtra Seamless (MSL) - a flagship company of the Rs 3,000 crore turnover DP Jindal Group - announced that the parent company is acquiring Romania-based seamless plant with a capacity of 2,00,000 TPA.

The acquisition is expected to surge at further heights in view of increased prices of oil and also increasing demand for energy requirements. This would enable the group to capture the maximum demand potential going forward and would lead to substantial growth in the businesses of MSL.

The group is well diversified into manufacturing of Seamless Pipes, ERW Pipes, Wind Power Generation, Offshore Oil & Gas Drilling and projects exports. The group is also having a Joint Venture with Tenaris, the largest manufacturer of Seamless Pipes in the world and also having a marketing collaboration with Noble Drilling, US, the second largest drilling company of the world, for Indian operations.