ANKARA, Turkey — The mother thought her baby looked healthy when he was born 1.5 months early, but staff rushed him to the neonatal intensive care unit.

It was the last time Burcu Gokdeniz saw her child alive. The doctor in charge told him that Umut Ali’s heart had stopped after his health deteriorated unexpectedly.

Seeing her son wrapped in a shroud 10 days after he was born was the “worst moment” of her life, the 32-year-old e-commerce specialist told The Associated Press.

Gokdeniz is among hundreds of parents who have called for an investigation into the deaths of their children or other loved ones since Turkish prosecutors charged 47 doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers and other medical workers with negligence or malpractice in the death of 10 newborns last time. year.

Medical workers say they have made the best possible judgment calls while caring for the most delicate patients imaginable and facing criminal penalties for undesirable outcomes.

Devastated parents say they have lost faith in the system and the cases have sparked so much outrage that demonstrators staged protests in October outside hospitals where some of the deaths took place, throwing stones at the buildings.

Prosecutors did not say how much the scheme allegedly earned. After the scandal broke, at least 350 families petitioned prosecutors, the Health Ministry or the president’s office to request an investigation into the deaths of their loved ones, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Prosecutors are seeking up to 583 years in prison for the main defendant, Dr. Firat Sari, who operated neonatal intensive care units in several Istanbul hospitals. Sari is accused of “establishing an organization with the aim of committing a crime”, “fraud of public institutions”, “forgery of official documents” and “manslaughter”.

Prosecutors say the evidence clearly shows medical fraud for profit. An indictment issued this month accused the defendants of falsifying records and placing patients in private hospitals’ neonatal care units for prolonged and sometimes unnecessary treatments in facilities unprepared to treat them.

Turkey guarantees healthcare to all citizens, and its public healthcare system reimburses private hospitals that treat eligible patients. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, in power since 2002, has promoted the expansion of private health facilities to improve access in the country of 85 million people.

After years of fertility treatment, Ozan Eskici and his wife welcomed twins – a boy and a girl – in one of Sari’s hospitals in 2019. Although the babies initially appeared healthy, both were admitted to intensive care. The girl was discharged after 11 days, but the boy died 24 days later.

During prosecutors’ hearings, Sari denied allegations that the babies did not receive adequate care, that the newborn units were understaffed or that its employees were not properly qualified, according to a 1,400-page indictment.

He told prosecutors: “Everything is in accordance with procedures.”

This week, an Istanbul court approved the indictment – which includes hundreds of pages of transcripts of secretly recorded phone conversations between the suspects – and set a trial date for November 18.

The way the case horrified the nation left the defendants increasingly isolated.

Lawyer Ali Karaoglan said he and two other lawyers who represented Sari during the investigation recently withdrew from the case. And authorities have since revoked the licenses and closed nine of the 19 hospitals involved in the scandal, including one owned by a former health minister.

The scandal prompted the leader of the main opposition party, Ozgur Ozel, to call for all hospitals involved to be seized by the state and nationalized. Erdogan said those responsible for the deaths would be severely punished, but warned against blaming the country’s health system.

“We will not allow our health community to be hit because of a few bad apples,” Erdogan said, calling the alleged culprits “a gang of inhumane people.”

“This gang … has committed such vile atrocities by exploiting the facilities provided by our state to provide citizens with better quality and more accessible healthcare at affordable prices,” Erdogan said.

He added: “Those who commit such barbarism will be brought to justice in the most severe manner for their crimes. As president, I will continue to personally pursue this issue to ensure that these killers, who toyed with the lives of innocent children for financial gain, never see the light of day again.”

Gokdeniz, who gave birth in 2020, said she trusted Sari and accepted her son’s death as natural until she watched the scandal unfold on TV news and social media.

“Everything started to fall into place like dominoes,” she said.

And Eskici put his full trust in Sari, whose assurances he now considers cruel deceptions.

“The sentences he told me are before my eyes as if they were yesterday,” he said.

Sibel Kosal, who lost her daughter Zeynep in a private hospital in 2017, is also looking for answers. She says the scandal has shattered her faith in the health care system and left her in constant fear for her surviving children.

“They destroyed a father and a mother,” she said.

Kosal asked the authorities to take immediate action.

“Don’t let the babies die, don’t let the mothers cry,” she said. “We want a livable world, one where our children are safe.”

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Badendieck reported from Hamburg, Germany.