Former President Mehmet Ali Talat was asked by KibrisPostasi for his thoughts on the prescription fraud case.
Talat said that doctors are not the “main actors” in these matters, and there are many practical complications. Meanwhile many people, including former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament Dr. Sibel Siber, have been affected.
Talat shared the fact that Dr. Siber was offered a place in hospital for her detention period while awaiting a preliminary court hearing, however, she rejected this offer and spent her detention time in prison because she wanted to be tried like everyone else.
“This is a violation of human rights… There is a case before the European Court of Human Rights about handcuffs… You cannot demean someone who does not present a flight risk, who does not show aggressive behaviour, and is a compliant person, by putting on handcuffs, and the state is sentenced to compensation”.
Current Prescription System Failures
Talat said: “There are certain procedures to get medicine from these insurances… But these procedures were not applied in practice because they were wrong”. He said he believed that medical practitioners had deviated from the rules to enable patient access to medicines.
“I don’t know if anyone has benefited from this and made money. The court will reveal that. If the doctor writes a prescription, even if the medicine doesn’t go to the patient, is it the doctor’s fault? We don’t know that either.
“Maybe the pharmacist did it. Maybe the doctor prescribed four medications, the patient went and got three, saying one is already at home. There is a lot of confusion like this. Basically, the procedure is wrong. After all, they said it would be prescribed every six months, which is still not enough. There are patients who have been using the same medication for 15 years. If there is unjust gain in this matter, and since medicines were found in the trash, it means something is going on. But it seems to me that doctors don’t have much of a role in this…”
