Blaming over-admission of patients at risk of premature birth for the large number of infant deaths, Ümit Bilge, the deputy chief physician at the Dr. Zekai Tahir Burak Women’s Health and Teaching Hospital of Ankara, announced that the hospital would not be admitting more patients set to deliver prematurely.
Health Minister Recep Akdağ has ordered the formation of an investigatory commission to look into the deaths at the hospital. The commission includes experts from university teaching and research hospitals and an inspector from the Health Ministry. The ministry said the investigation would be conducted with transparency and that prescribed procedures would be observed regarding any hospital staff found to have been at fault. A fierce debate is taking place between hospital officials and families who lost babies at the hospital, with families claiming the deaths were caused by unhealthy hospital conditions. Officials contest these accusations.
Health Workers Union (SES) head Bedriye Yorgun claims the babies died from the contraction of an infection at the hospital; the hospital’s chief physician Dr. Leyla Mollamahmutoğlu denies this, saying the babies died as a result of complications connected to premature birth.
Mollamahmutoğlu said an inspection of the entire hospital -- including the neonatal intensive care units -- had been performed but had not yielded any signs of infection. She added that infant death numbers had increased particularly in a three-day period. Mentioning allegations that infants receiving care at the facility had been transferred to other hospitals, the doctor said: “No infants are being taken to other hospitals. At this point, only pregnancies of 38 weeks or later are being delivered at our hospital. We have insisted that pregnancies earlier than 38 weeks -- namely, premature infants -- be delivered at other hospitals until we can overcome some problems at ours.” Mollamahmutoğlu noted that while the infant delivery room on the hospital’s seventh floor has been under construction for three months and that deliveries are temporarily being performed in another room, the infant deaths have nothing to do with that situation.
Dr. Uğur Dilmen, chief of the hospital’s newborns unit, pointed out a correlation between infants born weighing less than 1,000 grams and infant death. Dilmen emphasized that their hospital delivered as many babies in a month as the average university hospital does in a year, saying 4,443 infants had been born or treated at their facilities in the past 12 months. In July, 504 infants underwent treatment at the hospital and 47 died due to various health problems, Dilmen said. Tissue samples were collected from the infants that died and the other babies being treated at the hospital, but no signs of infection were found, he said, adding: “They claim that the files on dead babies were hidden, but our hospital has an automatic system; you cannot hide or lose anything. It’s impossible to do.”
However, statements delivered by hospital officials were not sufficient for families, many of which blame the hospital. Reports say some are preparing to file criminal complaints against the hospital administration.
One of the 27 infants who recently died at the Zekai Tahir Burak Hospital was İrem Poyraz, who died 27 days after birth. Her brother, Özmen Poyraz, claims many babies in the newborns unit shared incubators with other infants, as his sister did. He also said those entering the newborns unit were only made to disinfect their hands and not required to wear the usual infection-preventing shoe covers or outerwear.
Grieving for her daughter’s death, mother Döndü Poyraz said: “I am consumed with grief. I hope other mothers do not have to suffer from the same.” Döndü and Hüseyin Poyraz were told that their baby suffered from a kidney inflammation. The couple wanted to take their child to another hospital, but say officials from Zekai Tahir Burak Hospital prevented them and said it was unnecessary to transfer their daughter to another facility. After learning other babies had died in the same hospital, Hüseyin Poyraz said, “If we had known about the hospital’s poor record, we would have taken our baby to another one.”
Benzer Haberler 
