The deaths of ten newborns damage the trust of millions of people in Turkey’s healthcare system

ANKARA, Turkey – The mother thought her baby looked healthy when he was born a month and a half prematurely, but staff rushed him to the neonatal intensive care unit.

It was the last time Burcu Gokdeniz saw her baby alive. The doctor in charge told her that Umut Ali’s heart stopped after his health unexpectedly deteriorated.

Seeing her son wrapped in a shroud 10 days after his birth was the “worst moment” of her life, the 32-year-old e-commerce specialist told The Associated Press.

Gokdeniz is one of hundreds of parents who have come forward to investigate the deaths of their children or other loved ones after Turkish prosecutors accused 47 doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and other medical staff of neglect or malpractice in the deaths of 10 newborns since last year. year.

The medical providers say they made the best possible decisions in caring for the most vulnerable patients imaginable, and face criminal penalties for unwanted outcomes.

Shattered parents say they have lost faith in the system and the cases have sparked such outrage that demonstrators staged protests outside hospitals in October where some died, throwing rocks at buildings.

Prosecutors have not said how much the plan would have raised. After the scandal came to light, at least 350 families petitioned prosecutors, the Health Ministry or the president’s office to investigate the deaths of their loved ones, state-owned Anadolu Agency reported .

Prosecutors are seeking up to 583 years in prison for the main defendant, Dr. Firat Sari, who managed the neonatal intensive care units of several hospitals in Istanbul. Sari is accused of ‘setting up an organization for the purpose of committing a crime’, ‘defrauding public institutions’, ‘falsification of official documents’ and ‘negligent homicide’.

Prosecutors say the evidence clearly shows for-profit medical fraud. In an indictment issued this month, the defendants were accused of falsifying records and placing patients in the neonatal care units of some private hospitals for lengthy and sometimes unnecessary treatments in facilities unprepared to treat them.

Turkey guarantees healthcare for all citizens, and its public healthcare system reimburses private hospitals that treat eligible patients. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, in power since 2002, has promoted the expansion of private healthcare facilities to improve access in the country of 85 million people.

After years of fertility treatments, Ozan Eskici and his wife welcomed twins – a boy and a girl – in one of Sari’s hospitals in 2019. Although the babies initially appeared healthy, both were admitted to intensive care. The girl was discharged after 11 days, but the boy died 24 days later.

During questioning by prosecutors, Sari denied allegations that the babies did not receive proper care, that the neonatal units were understaffed or that his employees did not have the proper qualifications, according to a 1,400-page indictment.

He told prosecutors: “Everything is in accordance with procedures.”

This week, a court in Istanbul approved the indictment – ​​which contains hundreds of pages of transcripts of secretly recorded recordings of telephone conversations between suspects – and set the trial date for November 18.

The way the case has shocked the nation has left the suspects increasingly isolated.

Lawyer Ali Karaoglan said he and two other lawyers who represented Sari during the investigation recently withdrew from the case. And authorities have since revoked licenses and closed nine of the 19 hospitals involved in the scandal, including one owned by a former health minister.

The scandal has prompted the leader of the main opposition party, Ozgur Ozel, to call for all hospitals involved to be seized by the state and nationalized. Erdogan said those responsible for the deaths would be severely punished, but warned against placing all the blame on the country’s healthcare system.

“We will not allow our healthcare community to be battered because of a few bad apples,” Erdogan said, calling the alleged perpetrators “a gang of people without humanity.”

“This gang has committed such despicable atrocities by using the facilities our state provides to provide citizens with higher quality and more accessible, affordable healthcare,” Erdogan said.

He added: “Those who commit such barbarity will be held accountable for their crimes before the law in the most serious manner. As President, I will continue to personally monitor this issue to ensure that these murderers, who played with the lives of innocent babies for financial gain, never see the light of day again.”

Gokdeniz, who gave birth in 2020, said she trusted Sari and accepted her son’s death as natural until she saw the scandal unfold on TV news and on social media.

“It all started to fall into place like dominoes,” she said.

Eskici also had full confidence in Sari, whose assurances he now regards as a cruel deception.

“The sentences he told me are before my eyes as if it were yesterday,” he said.

Sibel Kosal, who lost her daughter Zeynep in a private hospital in 2017, is also looking for answers. She says the scandal has damaged her confidence in the health care system and she lives in constant fear for her surviving children.

“They ruined a father and a mother,” she said.

Kosal called on authorities to take immediate action.

“Don’t let babies die, don’t let mothers cry,” she said. ‘We want a liveable world, a world in which our children are safe.’

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Badendieck reported from Hamburg, Germany.