A PREGNANT woman with Covid-19 died while giving birth after she was reportedly turned away from three hospitals.
Donus Kilinc, 32, was in the ninth month of her pregnancy when she caught the coronavirus in Istanbul, Turkey.
The teacher died on November 3 after she went into labour and begged her husband Ramazan to take her to hospital as she was in severe pain.
Ramazan rushed his wife Pendik Medipol Hospital where she had been treated during her pregnancy but was reportedly told that the facility was not accepting patients with Covid.
Ramazan said: “When I said that my wife had Covid-19, they did not even let us in. So I called the hospital director.
“He told me, ‘we don’t accept patients with Covid-19 to protect the other patients inside. We are not a pandemic hospital’.
“When I insisted, he replied ‘you can come back when your spouse’s Covid-19 test is negative’. Meanwhile, my wife was writhing in pain.”
Ramazan said the hospital had “shut their door in our faces, even though we had been their patients”, Gazete Duvar reported.
Ms Kilinc was taken to two more hospitals, but her husband claims both turned her away, saying they wanted to protect their patients from the virus.
The desperate couple were told “we cannot exceed the quota”.
TRAGIC END
She then went to a private hospital, where she underwent urgent surgery but it wasn’t enough to save her life.
The couple’s baby miraculously survived despite Ms Kilinc’s death.
Ramazan said: “They said that we would have lost the baby too if we had waited any longer.”
The devastated husband has begun legal action against the hospitals.
He said: “We lost a woman who devoted her life to children and education for years. This state lost a teacher, a child his mother… they let us down.”
A Pendik Medipol Hospital said Ramazan’s claims were “unreal, defamatory and misleading the public”.
Turkey had 31,923 new coronavirus cases yesterday, taking the country’s total to 700,880.
A further 193 deaths were recorded for a total toll of 14,129.
