Turks saddened by demise of selfless doctor

Medical ‘Robin Hood’ got COVID-19 on job

ANKARA, Turkey — Dr. Murat Dilmener sometimes bent hospital rules in Istanbul to ensure that patients without health insurance got the treatment they needed. He frequently saw poor Turks for free at his private clinic and persuaded more affluent ones to sponsor medical student scholarships.

His charity and compassion would inspire Turkish newspapers to dub Dilmener the “Robin Hood of the medical profession” and earn the professor and practicing physician the admiration of thousands of patients and students. But they also landed him in trouble.

Dilmener died of COVID-19 on May 3. His family thinks the 78-year-old infectious diseases specialist acquired the disease while tending to another one of the patients he couldn’t turn away. The team that treated him included former students, who were devastated they could not save his life.

Following in Robin Hood’s footsteps with a stethoscope instead of a bow and arrow wasn’t easy.

In 2004, Dilmener and other doctors were investigated for allegedly causing the Istanbul Medical Faculty Hospital financial losses by unlawfully treating patients who had neither social security coverage nor certificates proving destitution, which were required at the time.

Dilmener was ordered to pay the equaivalent of $73,000 today in restitution, a colossal amount for a Turkish family at the time. The case dragged on for a decade before an appeals court eventually ruled in his favor.

A 2006 article in Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper quoted Dilmener as saying the patients at issue “were in such a hopeless situation that we treated some of them for free, in line with our Hippocratic Oaths.”

It was a stressful time for his family. The youngest of his three children, son Caner Dilmener, 32, recalls asking his mother how they would manage to pay the hospital. His father, a quiet man of few words, remained calm.

Dilmener was convinced he was in the right and defended himself at court hearings. If anything, he was annoyed the restitution case took up precious time he could “effectively” use treating patients, Caner said.

Years later, Dilmener would feel vindicated when Turkey overhauled its health care system to provide the universal access and health coverage he’d strongly championed.

Dilmener retired from hospital work in 2008 but continued to treat patients at his clinic. His family thinks he was infected with the coronavirus on March 16, a day when he hadn’t planned to go to the clinic but did because his assistant told him three patients made appointments.

“He didn’t reject any patients during his life,” Caner said. “You cannot find any single person who could talk any negative word about my dad. His students loved him. His patients adored him. His family loved him dearly.”

Courtesy Caner Dilmener Dr. Murat Dilmener, a professor of infectious diseases in Istanbul, with his daughter Fulya in February. Dilmener died on May 3 of COVID-19. His treatment team included former students, who were devastated that they could not save his life.