ANKARA - Drawing attention to infant mortality rate in the country, the DEM Party Health and Social Policies Commission said: “The infant mortality rate in Turkey in 2021 is 3 times higher than the average of EU member states.”
The Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) Health and Social Policies Commission issued a written statement on the occasion of the September 3-9 Public Health Week.
NO HEALTH FOR THOSE WITHOUT MONEY
In the statement it was stated in the AKP years, there is no medicine or health service for those who cannot afford it and instead of using the taxes collected from the people to provide health services to the people, they distributed them like handouts to the contractors and operators of city hospitals. It was said: “They closed state hospitals in city centers and gave their land to their cronies, forcing even bleeding and emergency patients to go to city hospitals many kilometers away from the city. In the 22nd year of the AKP government, our people cannot even get appointments for months in order to be examined, have tests or undergo surgery. People are condemned to queues that last almost a year. Patients who could not reach the state hospitals were forced to go to private hospitals with everything they had in order not to suffer and die. The flood of health ministers owning private hospitals was all part of these plans.”
INFANT MORTALITY
It was stated in the statement that 9.3 out of every thousand live-born babies in Turkey in 2021 and 9.2 out of every thousand live-born babies in 2022 died before seeing their first birthday and said: “On the other hand, 3.6 out of every thousand live-born babies in OECD countries and 3.1 in EU countries died before seeing their first birthday in 2021. The infant mortality rate in Turkey in 2021 is 2.6 times higher than the average of OECD countries and 3 times higher than the average of EU member countries.”
In the statement, the following statements were made: “The comparison of infant mortality rates of each province clearly shows how deep the inequalities in health are in Turkey. In 2021, 16 out of a thousand live babies born in Hakkari and 16.8 out of a thousand live babies born in Siirt in 2022 died before their first birthday. 56 out of every hundred infant deaths in Hakkari and 55 out of every hundred infant deaths in Siirt are preventable deaths.”