Infant Deaths Not Shared with Public Because ‘It is In-House Information’

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Uğur Kalkan, main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) Şahinbey District Municipal Council member, previously applied to the Presidency Communication Center (CİMER) and asked how many infants died in Turkey's southeastern province of Antep in the first six months of 2019 and what was their distribution by hospitals.

As reported by Hazal Ocak from daily Cumhuriyet, the Provincial Directorate of Health in Antep, where the incidence of infant deaths is the highest, responded to the question of Kalkan. Referring to the Articles 12 and 36 of the regulation concerning the procedures and principles to be observed in enforcing the law on acquisition of information, the Directorate has indicated that it cannot provide information regarding the issue.

The Article 12 of the regulation in question foresees that "institutions and organizations can give negative answers to the applications for information or documents that could be created as a result of a separate or special study, research, inquiry or analysis and to the applications for information or documents about an action that has not yet matured."

As for the Article 36, it stipulates that "information or documents about regulations that do not concern the public and solely pertain to the own personnel and intra-institutional regulations of the institutions and organizations are outside the scope of the right to acquire information. However, the the right to acquire information of the institution personnel affected by the regulation in question is reserved."

According to the figures on infant mortality announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), Antep was the province with the highest infant mortality rate in Turkey in 2018. The figures have shown that 15 out of every thousand babies died across the province in 2018. (RT/SD)