Personal doctors to care citizens over 85: Minister
ANKARA
With the new regulation to be announced soon, each citizen over the age of 85 will be cared for by a personal doctor, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said.
“We would like to entrust each of our people over the age of 85 to a physician. With the new regulation, a personal doctor will follow-up with the elderly while receiving health care,” Koca said at the parliament’s budget meetings.
The ministry made its preparations and will announce the regulation soon, he added.
A project was earlier prepared upon the request of the Health Ministry to establish health centers for the elderly within hospitals, which will enable them to be treated at the nearest location.
The project focuses on 650,000 people over the age of 85 in the first phase, and this age will be reduced to 75 in 2023 and then to 65.
The Elderly Health and Monitoring Centers (YAŞATEM) will be in coordination with the health service units, while geriatrics specialists will head the centers.
Asked about the woman who was arrested after introducing herself as a practicing physician in a state hospital in the northwestern province of Tekirdağ for about a year, the minister said, “Individual examples should not tarnish the entire health organization.”
“We do not allow anyone to stain the white of our apron,” he stated.
Ayşe Özkiraz, who is understood to have practiced medicine with a fake diploma, was arrested after other doctors in the hospital suspected and complained.
Sharing many photos while so-called performing surgery on her social media accounts, Özkiraz lied to those around her about many issues, including her age.
In her statements to the prosecutor’s office, though she told the doctors that she was 25 years old, she was just 20 years old.
She also told everyone that she graduated from Çapa Medicine Faculty ranking first in class.
