Malpractice at a private hospital in Istanbul has spread fears of botulism. This month, between 200 and 250 patients who underwent Botox injections in the stomach to lose weight have developed complications, and several of them have ended up in intensive care, with symptoms of suffocation. The result could have been fatal if, after identifying the cause, the appropriate antitoxin had not been used in time.
The vast majority of those affected are Turkish citizens, but about twenty would be health tourists, who in several cases presented symptoms already on their return to Germany – a dozen – or, in isolated cases, to Austria or Switzerland. According to a source in the sector, many of them would be of Turkish origin.
All had resorted to the services of the Gisbir hospital, in the suburb of Tuzla, with the promise of losing up to fifteen kilos. Botox toxin injections, common in cosmetics, present much greater risks when applied to the stomach, which is why they are not recommended in Europe. Although they are also in Turkey, they have been common for five years.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has implicated Izmir’s Bati Anadolu Central Hospital in three of the cases, but it denies using this technique and says it only performs endoscopies, not anti-obesity treatments. Koca assures that the consignments of the toxin have been intervened and the units dedicated to this practice have been closed.
In any case, on Saturday afternoon the Gisbir emergency room was still open. Not so the polyclinic, with five floors. The most shocking thing about this hospital doubled as an aesthetic clinic, where Istanbul ends, is the inhospitable ugliness of its environment of ships and ship repair shops.
The explanation is that Gisbir is, first of all, the employers’ association of shipbuilders. Hence, it is at the foot of the Tuzla shipyards -23,000 workers-, famous for the workplace accidents.
According to the Turkish press, on March 1 it was clear that there was a problem. But the center completed the planned operations until the 3rd, when the doctor in question (it is not clear to the media that he is) sent a WhatsApp alert to his patients.
Deniz, in charge of a company dedicated to attracting health tourism, expresses his anger. “I never work with hospitals like that, but I have to follow it closely, because of the image damage for the sector. On Thursday I read that two seriously ill patients had died. But the next day, the news was gone. Either it was a rumor or they are covering it up.
Gisbir is an entity close to power in Turkey and its leadership is a native of Rize, like President Erdogan himself, who inaugurated the hospital in 2010. The employer pays out of pocket for even the police cars in the Tuzla district, a city in from the city.
The president of the Turkish Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Serap ?im?ek Yavuz, speaks of an “epidemic”. “In my entire career I had only seen two cases of botulism.”
A German patient of Turkish origin explains her ordeal: “I returned to Hamburg the next day. After three days I began to see blurry. From Istanbul they said to drink tea. Then they recognized that the botox had spread. By then I couldn’t swallow food and I felt weak as if I were 82 instead of 32. At the hospital here they suspected botulism, but they didn’t know how to treat it because they didn’t know what toxin it was and where it was injected.”
The president of the Bariatric Surgery Association, Mustafa Taskin, denounces the clinics that, once their quota of Botox has been covered, monitored by the State, “out of greed, to operate more”, they resort to the black market. Turkey, in turn, needs foreign currency.
Belinda (name changed), a Latin American agent who has been working in the sector for five years, “now on my own, but before in clinics”, speaks of “mafias”. “Many of those who do hair grafts are not doctors.”
She also assures that in recent weeks she herself had been interested in Botox. “I wanted to lose 5 or 6 kilos. But articles began to appear and I showed one to the professional who had been informing me. She told me that the problem had been an excess dose. Botox numbs the stomach, digestion becomes very heavy and one immediately feels full. But if they go too far, the diaphragm doesn’t move and you can’t breathe.”
The testimony of one affected, on a website of medical complaints, claims “to have returned from the dead.” Another says she felt like “a guinea pig.”
In a statement posted on Twitter, Koca specified that an investigation by the Turkish Drug Council shows that these substances had been imported legally, but that they were not indicated for Botox therapies in the stomach. The same body issued an alert two Fridays ago to block the sale of a certain batch of Botox while the investigation lasted.
The Gisbir hospital, responsible for the crisis, offers travel packages for rhinoplasty, hair implants and other cosmetic surgeries. Like Bati Anadolu, it appears on the ministerial list of entities apt to operate in health tourism and has participated in fairs.
A sociologist who inquired into the Tuzla shipyards at a time when an average of two workers a month died in an accident at work is not surprised by Gisbir’s turn to Botox and vaginoplasty. “They founded the hospital so that casualties, compensation and deaths were controlled by their own doctors. So, surprised?; not at all. It was already created with a profit motive”.
