‘Our people are sacrificed for the profit of pharma monopolies’

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA) - File

Click to read the article in Turkish

İYİ Party Chair Meral Akşener spoke at the weekly group meeting of her party in Ankara today (March 16). In her speech, she also talked about the working conditions of healthcare workers and what happened on March 14 Doctor's Day and the doctors' 2-day strike.

Referring to President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as "Mr. Crisis", İYİ Party's Meral Akşener also mentioned the targeting remarks of Erdoğan, who had addressed physicians and said that "they might go as they wish".

"I think it was in 2003... Mr. Crisis came up again at one meeting and said, 'I don't receive an injection from doctors, I receive it from nurses, doctors are weak in that respect,' which shocked me," recalled Akşener, arguing that Erdoğan is "trying to pit health workers against one another".

"This means causing discord between two employees who have to work together, I mean between a doctor, who graduated from a medical faculty, and a nurse, who graduated from a medical school, and pitting them against one another," explained Meral Akşener.

Referring to the debates on health workers' wages, Akşener said, "Why does he say that their salaries are 8-9-10 thousand? Because other health workers earn less. They want to pit you against each other".

Underlining that she and her party know how selflessly and in the face of what hardships doctors work, Meral Akşener said:

"We know that you cannot receive the well-deserved respectability of your esteemed profession. We know that you are subjected to all types of unjust acts, ranging from working conditions to violence.

"And we know how worn out you are by the inconsiderate, hostile and spoiled attitudes, as if all these were not enough..."

Addressing physicians and health workers and calling on them to "have a little bit more patience", Akşener promised that "when the İYİ Party comes to power, it will not let them be despised any longer".

'They closed the pharma plant'

In this context, Akşener addressed Erdoğan as "Mr. Crisis" again and said, "At the root of the unjust and ungrounded attack of Mr. Crisis against our doctors lies the effort to hide the fact that the health system has been made available to foreigners and unearned income earners."

Raising concerns about the shortage of medication or exorbitant prices at pharmacies, Akşener stressed that the main reason behind this situation is Turkey's complete foreign dependence in medication:

Because, in 2005, the AK Party government closed the Social Insurance Institution (SSK) Pharmaceutical Plant, which the Republic founded, was owned by the Turkish Nation and opened by the former governments in 1979, just as it sells off all values.

Akşener explained that the factory prioritized the manufacture of most frequently used medications such as pain killers, antipyretics, antibiotics and antiseptics within its own body: "With its closure, our people have been left at the mercy of foreign drugmakers. In other words, our people have been sacrificed for the profit of pharma monopolies, in a sense".

'We pay billions for city hospitals'

Talking about city hospitals, a project of the AKP governments undertaken with a build-operate-transfer model, İYİ Party Chair Akşener raised concerns that "every year, we pay billions of liras of rent to the companies that built and have been operating the city hospitals". According to Akşener, in 2021, the amount of money paid to companies was 14.3 billion lira.

She also stressed that a guarantee was given for these hospitals for 25 years and the payments made in this context are updated based on the changes in the foreign exchange rates: "So, with the serious loss of value in Turkish Lira this year, rent payments will increase incrementally".

Akşener noted that "with their 3-year rent, the investment costs of city hospitals can be met, which means the rent paid for the rest of 22 years becomes the profit of companies that built and operate them". (AS/SD)