Four-year-old dies after father travels to three cities across Anatolia to find treatment

IĞDIR

Families buried the four-year-old at the cemetary of their village near Iğdır, in norrtheastern Anatolia. DHA Photo

A four-year-old boy diagnosed of meningitis has died after his father traveled to three cities across eastern and central Anatolia after doctors at hospitals refused to treat him.

Mücahit Gürcan first took his son to the public hospital of his hometown of Iğdır in northeastern Turkey after his son Diyar fell sick on July 29 last week.

Doctors only put Diyar under transfusion and made the young patient wait for 15 hours, before proposing the father to transfer him to Konya in Central Anatolia, arguing there was no vacancy in any of the hospitals in the region.

The father then took his child to the nearby Kars and from there to Erzurum, but hospitals in both cities refused to admit them due to not having vacancies. He eventually travelled further west to Sivas on Aug. 1, more than 700-kilometers from Iğdır, where he could finally find treatment. But doctors at the Sivas Cumhuriyet University’s hospital were unable to save Diyar, whose heart had stopped on his way to the central Anatolian city.   

The father, Mücahit Gürcan, also denounced that no vehicle was provided to bring his son’s body home and he eventually carried it with a small coffin on his lap for nine hours.

Gürcan said he intended to open a lawsuit against the people responsible at Iğdır’s public hospital. “They tricked me by saying that an air ambulance would be sent to bring us to Konya. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says Israel murders Palestinian children. Their children deserve to live, and ours don’t? I will file a complaint against all of the officials at the Iğdır state hospital,” he said.  

Body carried by horses

In another incident that showed the deficiencies of hospitals in rural areas, the body of a shepherd in the province of Erzincan was carried by villagers on horses after he lost his life at the pastures. The body was brought to the village in 14 hours and from there transported to a hospital at the neighboring province of Erzurum.