On 26 June, Parliament voted in the first reading on a bill that, for the first time, defines the «particle accelerator» in law and broadens its use, according to Parliament’s statement. The official message links it directly to a stake that touches tens of thousands of families: «advanced technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer».
Before any enthusiasm, an honest clarification. It is not yet law — a second reading follows, and only then the final adoption. And, more importantly, it is a framework text: it regulates and authorises, it does not buy machines or open new services overnight. To understand why it matters for a person from Ungheni all the same, one must look not at the text, but at the map behind it.
What Parliament actually voted
The bill amends Law no. 132/2012 on the safe conduct of nuclear and radiological activities. Today, the law mentions particle accelerators only in the context of radiotherapy. The amendment introduces an explicit definition of the notion and extends the scope: accelerators will be able to be authorised and used clearly for medical, industrial, research and other purposes.
The stated aim is to plug the current gaps, clarify authorisation procedures and strengthen the oversight of ionising radiation — a field regulated by the National Agency for the Regulation of Nuclear and Radiological Activities. The text partly transposes the European directive on basic safety standards for protection against ionising radiation, part of the legislative alignment with the European Union.
According to the author, MP Adrian Belîi — a doctor by profession and chair of the Committee on Social Protection, Health and Family — the explicit regulation of accelerators is a condition for modern oncology services: advanced radiotherapy and the production of radiopharmaceuticals, the substances used in precision imaging diagnostics. In other words, the law prepares the legal framework; the machines, the money and the centres are another discussion.
Why it matters: where cancer is treated in Moldova
This is where the underlying reality comes in. The entire radiotherapy capacity of the Republic of Moldova — the linear accelerators that irradiate tumours — is concentrated in a single institution, the Oncological Institute in Chișinău. This is not an impression: the National Cancer Control Programme itself, adopted by the Government, noted that radiotherapy operates exclusively there, being absent from district institutions, and that concentration in a single place «produces enormous social costs borne by patients and families» — first of all transport costs.
The state has invested, in recent years, to increase this capacity. The first modern linear accelerator, presented as «unique in the Republic of Moldova», was inaugurated in February 2022; in March 2025 a new complex was put into use, with a second accelerator, built with external support. The state secretary of the Ministry of Health, Ion Prisăcaru, said at the end of 2025 that the country has 4 of the 8 linear accelerators recommended by the World Health Organization, and that the waiting time had fallen from about six months to about two. Real progress, but from a low base — and still in Chișinău.
The burden, on the other hand, is growing. At national level, the number of new cases of malignant tumours rose to 11,238 in 2024, from about 10,000 two years earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Agency for Public Health.
What this means for a patient from Ungheni
For the Ungheni district, the district-level figure is mortality: in 2024, the death rate from malignant tumours was 205.28 per hundred thousand inhabitants — below the national average of 242.68, but enough for tumours to be the second cause of death in the district, after heart disease, with about 15% of the total. (How many new cancer cases are recorded each year in Ungheni cannot be said: incidence statistics exist only at national level.)
What does a patient find locally? The Ungheni District Hospital has an oncologist in its outpatient clinic — who detects, keeps records and refers onward — and received, in June 2025, a digital radiological system. But mind the words: that is diagnosis by X-rays, not radiotherapy. The hospital performs neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy. And early detection — the other end of the fight against cancer — falls to family doctors, whom we wrote about in the article on the «PREVENT» prevention project in the district.
This means that a person from Ungheni who needs radiotherapy travels to Chișinău, some 105 km — an hour and a half to two hours’ drive. And curative radiotherapy is not a visit, but dozens of sessions, on consecutive days, week after week. Translated into real life: either a daily commute of hundreds of kilometres, or a prolonged stay in the capital, with everything that entails — money, time off, a companion.
There is one more detail. From the autumn of 2025, Moldova began to bring chemotherapy «closer to home», opening wards in district hospitals — Briceni, Florești, Sângerei, Orhei, Cahul — and in Bălți, with a possible extension to five more districts. Ungheni is on no list. The reform concerns, in any case, only chemotherapy; radiotherapy remains, entirely, in Chișinău, because a linear accelerator requires large investments and special bunkers.
The most striking contrast comes from across the Prut. About 20 kilometres from the district, the Regional Oncology Institute in Iași has radiotherapy — and offers free accommodation to the patients who undergo it, precisely to ease their commute. The border runs right through the middle of this difference.
The other side: what the law solves and what it does not
It would be unfair to judge the law as something it does not claim to be. It does not promise an accelerator in Ungheni, nor even a new one in Chișinău. What it does is create the legal basis for technologies that today are not clearly regulated — from advanced radiotherapy to the domestic production of the radiopharmaceuticals on which precision oncology diagnosis depends. It is a pre-condition, not a solution. Without it, modernisation would remain without a framework; with it, modernisation still needs money, machines and staff.
The bill was voted by consensus, by majority and opposition alike, which is unusual. The pro-democracy association Promo-LEX flagged, for the 26 June sitting as a whole, transparency problems with most of the bills voted — short consultation deadlines, opinions not published on time — without pointing, however, to this particular bill; Parliament’s statement asserts that the text was drawn up after consultations with the Ministry of Health, civil society and the business community.
For a border district, some 105 km from the only place in the country where radiotherapy is performed, a law about definitions and authorisations remains a small step, but in the right direction. How many people from Ungheni actually make this journey — for radiotherapy or chemotherapy in Chișinău — is not known from public data, because the figure is not broken down by district. The distance, however, stays the same.
The legislative stage and the content of the bill come from the statement of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova (first reading, 26 June 2026) and from Law no. 132/2012. The centralisation of radiotherapy and the costs of access are documented by the National Cancer Control Programme (GD no. 1291/2016). The district mortality data and national incidence data belong to the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Agency for Public Health. The equipment of the Oncological Institute comes from statements by the Ministry of Health and the Presidency; the local services, from the page of the Ungheni District Hospital. The decentralisation of chemotherapy and the free accommodation in Iași are reported by the national press and by the Regional Oncology Institute in Iași, respectively. The exact number of linear accelerators functioning to date is not communicated uniformly by the authorities; official accounts indicate an upward trajectory.