The Turkish Parliament on Wednesday set up a committee to investigate newborn deaths in hospitals linked to the “Newborn Gang” scandal that shocked the nation last week.
Upon the joint proposal of political groups, the General Assembly assigned 22 members to probe the scandalous deaths of infants at several private hospitals for the next three months.
Ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) lawmaker Ümmügülşen Öztürk said the gang “acted against their sacred duty, abused our innocent babies for their dirty gains and treated them like a commercial property has deeply hurt us all.”
“To protect our health care system, we will root out these bad apples one by one and eradicate these gangs,” Öztürk vowed.
Türkiye has been rocked by one of the biggest health scandals in recent years following reports that a group of doctors and nurses caused the deaths of at least 10 newborns.
An Istanbul prosecutor on Monday indicted 47 people in total over the inappropriate treatment of babies for profit, while the Health Ministry has shut down nine private hospitals as a result of the investigation, with a total of 19 health institutions deemed to bear responsibility, the indictment said.
The suspects are accused of creating a criminal group to put newborns in certain private hospitals and receive payments from Türkiye's social security body for inappropriate and sometimes fake treatments, the indictment said.
Two of the suspects, working on an emergency phone line, had sought newborns that could be sent to these hospitals for intensive care treatment, according to the 1,399-page indictment filed in an Istanbul court last week.
It said newborns then became the victims of malpractice or inadequate medical care, with medicine meant for them sold to others and some dying due to infections contracted in the units.
The goal of the criminal gang was "to obtain financial gain, rather than improving the health conditions of the patients," it added.
The suspects, including two doctors and 11 nurses, denied the charges, saying they had not intentionally sent the newborns to particular hospitals and that the babies had received the necessary treatment, the indictment said.
The charges the suspects face include forming a criminal group, fraud, forgery of official documents and murder by negligence. Some defendants could be sentenced to as many as 589 years in jail if found guilty.
Twenty-two suspects have been jailed pending trial.
Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu on Tuesday said an extensive inspection was underway at hospitals linked to the case and that “significant evidence” was gathered.
He said the ministry conducted inspections initially in May following a complaint filed in late March but found evidence was being manipulated as inspectors "met barriers that suggested a deliberate effort to obscure the situation.”
He said police intervention was requested in early May, and authorities began to tap phones in June and started technical surveillance to build a case against the suspects.
