Turkey’s health minister, Kemal Memişoğlu, has announced a series of immediate reforms affecting the country’s private hospitals, including more inspections and controls, following outrage over a mafia network uncovered in at least 13 private hospitals in Istanbul that referred newborns to overcrowded intensive care units for unnecessary and medically unsupervised treatment, resulting in the deaths of at least 12 babies.
The investigation into the plot, the revelations of which have been making headlines throughout the past week and shocking Turkish society, has revealed a network of health workers, nurses and 112 emergency services staff who referred newborn babies to private hospitals in Istanbul – which were infiltrated by members of the organisation – under the pretext that they needed urgent – and much more costly – life-saving treatment, placing the babies in neonatal intensive care units.
In these units, often overcrowded with newborns so that the network could make more profit, the babies were not monitored by the right health staff – nurses were posing as doctors – and often suffered from infections or simply the effects of unnecessary and medically unsupervised medical treatment, with the result that many of them died – at least 12 deaths have been reported so far – or were left with lifelong side effects.
When members of the organisation called parents to notify them of their baby’s death, they blamed it on the alleged problems after birth that had forced them to be transferred to the ICU, rather than on the inadequate treatment provided. So far 47 people have been arrested of whom 22 have been imprisoned pending trial, where the prosecutor has already announced sentences of more than 500 years in prison for the main perpetrators. Some repentant members of the organisation are reportedly offering their cooperation to the authorities in an attempt to reduce these sentences.
The scheme could include other cities and adult patients
In the wake of the scandal, Turkish health minister Kemal Memişoğlu reportedly announced that inspections of private hospitals will now take place ‘more frequently than ever’, according to news agencies. According to Memişoğlu, audit protocols will be revamped and multidisciplinary expert commissions involving doctors and academics will be set up to monitor these facilities. ‘At the same time as these inspections are being carried out in private hospitals, our minister is also studying structural reforms in private health institutions,’ he added.
‘We will not tolerate those who try to tarnish the image of our health system, which is appreciated all over the world, because of their own personal and material interests. We will not allow a handful of greedy gangs to trample on the reputation of our health workers, who work at great sacrifice during disasters and epidemics,’ he said.
Furthermore, the minister said the new inspections will not be limited to neonatal units, but will include all hospital departments, facilities and equipment. The announcement comes after some media in Turkey have claimed in recent days that the scandal over the scheme, initially detected in Istanbul, could also affect other cities, and that the practices carried out on babies causing death or irreversible injuries could also have been carried out on adult patients. In recent days the authorities have cancelled the operating licences of at least 10 private hospitals in Istanbul.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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