Turkey investigates hospital deaths of 27 babies

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Turkey's Health Ministry launched an investigation Monday into the deaths of more than two dozen newborn babies at a hospital in Ankara. The Zekai Tahir Burak hospital has acknowledged that 27 babies died there in the past two weeks, but said most had died from complications related to premature delivery. Most of the 26,000 babies born each year or admitted to Zekai Tahir Burak are premature, as the hospital handles high-risk births. The hospital could not immediately say how many babies were delivered in the two week period involving the 27 deaths. Turkey's infant mortality rate in 2005 was 23.6 in 1,000, relatively high compared with neighboring Greece, where 3.8 in 1,000 newborns died the same year, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.