* Source and photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)
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In the districts of Karakeçili and Bahşılı in Kırıkkale province, five people, including two children, have suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the gas leaking from the heating stoves.
Last week, two children lost their lives in a fire that broke out in a shanty house in İstanbul's Gaziosmanpaşa. In the same fire, the mother and her 2-year-old child were injured. A few days before this incident, four children lost their lives and one child was severely wounded in a fire that broke out in a basement floor in İstanbul's Esenyurt district.
In Kırıkkale's Karakeçili, paramedic teams were informed that a family was affected by the gas leaking from their stove.
The teams arrived at the scene of the incident and diagnosed the family with carbon monoxide poisoning. They took Rabia (28), Zahide Nur (8) and Aybüke Zümra Tosun (4), who were affected by the gas, to the Kırıkkale University Medical Faculty Hospital in an ambulance.
In Büyük Sarıkaya village of Bahşılı district, Naile Günateş and Ayşegül Karakoç were also poisoned by the carbon monoxide that leaked from the heating stove. They were also taken to a hospital.
Suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, all five citizens reportedly do not have any life-threatening situation.
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'Much more difficulties in getting warm'
Speaking to bianet following the deadly fire that claimed the lives of four children in İstanbul's Esenyurt, Selen Yüksel from the Deep Poverty Network underlined that this winter, heating houses became all the more difficult and problematic as a result of the recent increase in prices:
"The Article 6 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Turkey is a party to, recognizes every child's inherent right to life and says: 'States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.' And Article 27 says that every child has a right to a standard of living adequate for her or his development.
"When poverty gets deeper, we see that several children are unable to access the rights necessary for an adequate standard of living such as healthy nutrition, a safe house, heating and medical needs.
"In 2021, 92 percent of the households that are a part of the Deep Poverty Network get warm by using heating stoves. We observe that this winter, families have much more difficulties in getting warm. As they cannot buy something to burn in the stoves, we receive more phone calls.
"The households that we follow say that the coal distributed by the sub-governor's office doesn't burn and they are having difficulty in finding something to burn. They say that when they cannot find anything to burn for getting warm, they use the waste that they can find, which brings about the risk that their respiratory system suffers long-term damage and a risk of fire and poisoning in the short term. Some families keep on using old and defective heating stoves because they cannot buy a new one.
"They cannot benefit from the stoves distributed by the sub-governor's office once in two years because it has not yet been two years since the previous support and that their residential address is not where they live because they live in tents/ under a bender, which leads them to use the defective heaters, thereby being exposed to a life risk." (AÖ/SD)
