May 09, 2006 Last year Fatma Özcan, a young girl, lost her life to avian flu because her parents were scared to take her to the hospital. Hospitals take the patient as hostages and will not release them if the payments for the costs are not paid by the release date. Reacting to the national […]
May 09, 2006
Last year Fatma Özcan, a young girl, lost her life to avian flu because her parents were scared to take her to the hospital. Hospitals take the patient as hostages and will not release them if the payments for the costs are not paid by the release date.
Reacting to the national uproar to her death, the Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan responded, “In these times, no state hospital can close its doors to patients in need. Whether they owe the bills, or for any other reason, that practice is behind us now. Taking patients as hostages, this, that. There is no such thing any more!”
Secretary of Health Recep Akdağ said, “What did we do in 2003? We worked to eliminate the shame called taking patients hostage. A patient or deceased was kept in the hospitals due to unpaid bills. We took the necessary steps to eliminate this shame.”
The Prime minister Erdoğan even went one step further and declared, “In our 16 months of government, have you ever heard of anyone being taken hostage in the hospitals? The first thing I’ll do when I hear such a thing is to take that doctor as a hostage. Take that mentality as hostage. I believe that this wrong mentality was due to pressures exerted by the doctors.”
These and many other similar statements are what the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have said about patients held hostage by the hospital administrations due to unpaid bills.
On the other hand, a woman in the town of Keskin in the Kırıkkale province has been convicted to 10 days in prison because she could not pay the bills she signed two years ago when she gave birth at a hospital.
Serpil İleri had been taken to the hospital to give birth where the couple’s daughter Pınar was born. The couple did not have social security and did not have enough means to pay for the birth. Instead, they were forced to sign a contract to pay for the bills totaling around 1000 US dollars.
The İleri family received a warning to pay the amount after a period. The couple had not responded and had not declared their wealth were taken to court and were sentenced to 10 days in jail. They have been in jail for a week now and their two children İpek (11 months) and Pınar (2 years) are at their grandmothers.
Baby deprived of her mother’s milk
The grandmother said, at the time when they received the warning, her husband had died, and could not deal with it on top of not having enough money to pay for the bills. She said her son had asked for help from many institutions but had not received any. She said, “My grandchildren are constantly crying for their mother. I know they will be released after 3 or 4 days, but since I am sick I am under great stress.
Hospital officials said they had warned the family three times.
