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"Islamist Turkey" - Turkey's new health law criminalizes Hippocratic oath.(TZ).
As of Jan. 17, Turkish doctors face hefty penalties for providing emergency medical care outside of a hospital without the government's permission.Criminalizing actions required by the Hippocratic oath has sparked international controversy, leading the UN and the world's leading medical groups to send a petition to President Abdullah Gül --who decided to ignore it, however.
The Turkish Doctor's Association (TTB) is also outraged by the new law, and is working closely with the Republican People's Party (CHP), the main opposition party, to repeal the law through the Constitutional Court.
Article 46 of the new law states that providing unauthorized medical care is punishable by one to three years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $1 million. The doctors can legally provide emergency medical care only when they arrive to the scene in a state ambulance with official permission.
Dr. Vincent Iacopino, a senior medical adviser at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), told Sunday's Zaman that the motive behind the new health law is clear: “The law was drawn up in light of the Gezi protests to prevent doctors from helping injured protesters in the future.”
Indeed, the draft bill was introduced late at night on July 9, at the height of the Gezi Park protests.Iacopino said that “discriminating against sick people based on different political situations is clearly wrong.”
Dr. Bayazıt İlhan, secretary-general of the TTB, wrote in an e-mail to Sunday's Zaman that during the Gezi protests, the government asked the TTB to reveal information on both the doctors who provided medical assistance to protesters as well as their patients, which violates physician-patient confidentiality and clearly shows that the “government dislikes the fact that doctors helped the protesters without the state's permission.”
He said this law is “unacceptable” as it bans the “ethical duty of doctors, who are obliged to help people in need regardless of their political, religious or ethnic origins.” Iacopino also said the new health law “goes against thousands of years of universal medical practice.”
Atıcı said that the main problem is that requiring doctors to obtain official permission to treat patients is in direct conflict with their medical ethics; doctors have the ethical obligation to treat sick people at all times.
The new law is therefore undermining humanitarian values and rights, putting the whole population at risk.Iacopino said that the “fact that the UN has opposed this bill indicates how dangerous and problematic this is for the medical community as well as for anyone seeking medical care.”
He said that “this is also in conflict with Articles 97 and 98 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which require medical personnel to provide emergency medical care.“
Article 46 of the health law was passed not to protect Turkish citizens from unregistered emergency medical providers as its supporters claim; it was passed to silence dissent -- including punishing emergency medical personnel for simply upholding their duty of providing care to anyone in need.”
Dr. Otmar Kloiber, secretary-general of the World Medical Association, wrote in an e-mail to Sunday's Zaman that "in the long run there has to be a political solution: a stronger development to democracy and more respect for civil society. Democracy and good governance are different from just having elections every four years and commanding and controlling in the meantime."Hmmmm.......Erdogan: "Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want."Read the full story here.