Opposition battles collection of medical records in Turkey
Turkey's Ministry of Health has embarked on a controversial effort to collect the names, addresses and diagnoses of psychiatric patients.
In May, the Turkish Ministry of Health asked family doctors to provide it with the medical records of patients with chronic psychotic disorders registered at communityl mental health centers. “The medical record files of patients with schizophrenia, paranoid disorders, psychotic disorders and bipolar disorders should be filled in and dispatched,” the official letter said. The Health Ministry’s latest move comes as a fresh indication that despite criticism and controversy over efforts to collect personal data, the government continues to try to compile detailed profiles of citizens.
The ministry’s request led Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader, to claim on March 17 that the police have been profiling all Turkish citizens. Speaking at a CHP parliamentary meeting, Kilicdaroglu charged that police intelligence “has collected online the personal information of all people in the country via the DEVA 1 and DEVA 2 [software] programs.”
In a joint statement June 5, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), the Turkish Psychiatry Association, the Turkish Specialized Family Doctors Association and the General Practitioners Association stressed that sharing medical records without patient consent was unacceptable and warned that the ministry’s effort amounted to a constitutional violation. It called for new legislation to regulate how the ministry is allowed to collect, process and share medical records in line with the constitution and international treaties to which Turkey is a signatory.
According to CHP deputy Aytun Ciray, a physician and a former Health Ministry undersecretary, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government began collecting medical records in 2012. “That year, the Health Ministry began storing the hospital records of all patients under a legal provision adopted in an omnibus law. A legislative decree allowed it access to the medical records of third parties,” Ciray told Al-Monitor.
