White March | ‘Our salaries are below poverty line’

* Photos: Bursa Medical Chamber

Click to read the article in Turkish

As part of its protests with the motto "Out Labor, Our Word", the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) has been on a "White March".

On the third day of the march yesterday (November 25), the TTB members arrived in Turkey's western province of Bursa.

Having arrived in the province, physicians made a press statement in front of the Bursa Provincial Health Directorate.

Reading out the statement for the press, Bursa Medical Chamber Chair Alpaslan Türkkan said, "While the number of applications per physician was 3.1 in 2002, this number increased to 9.8 in 2019 with the Transformation in Healthcare Program entering into force."

Referring to the numbers in European countries, Türkkan addressed the ones "who cite people's easy access to healthcare services to explain this high number of applications to physicians" and said, "We remind them of Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the OECD countries."

Bursa Medical Chamber Chair Türkkan also underlined that the workload of physicians and healthcare workers is really high in Turkey and stressed that "their wages are getting meager, even remain below the poverty line, even though their workload is increasing."

'It is against universal principles'

Türkkan denounced the Health Ministry's recent decision that physicians examine a patient every five minutes at public hospitals and family health centers. He said that "the state has been imposing this practice on them in a manner against the universal principles of medicine."

"Five minutes only suffice for looking the patients in the face; patients cannot be examined in five minutes," he protested.

Referring to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak as well, Türkkan noted that "instead of struggling in the field to prevent the spread of the disease, a struggle at hospitals has been preferred."

"Instead of protecting our citizens and contrary to contemporary understanding of medicine, it has been condoned that citizens get sick and a disease, for which there has not been a cure yet, is confronted at hospitals. For this reason, the ones who died, those who got sick and the number of beds have been talked about throughout the pandemic," he explained.

'Abandon the impositions'

Concluding his remarks, Bursa Medical Chamber Chair Alpaslan Türkkan listed the requests of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB):

"We want our weekly working hours to be rearranged and reduced; we want safe and healthy working environments in the face of violence and diseases; we want COVID-19 to be recognized as an occupational disease; as a patient cannot be examined in five minutes, we want this imposition to be abandoned; we want wages that we deserve, that affect our pensions and ensure a humane life instead of an additional payment, given unfairly when given." (RT/SD)