Relatives treat medical care to Gyulyalyev in Baku as unsatisfactory

During five months of Ogtai Gyulyalyev's stay in Baku, doctors visited the Azerbaijani human rights defender only once at the insistence of his relatives; while nurses refuse to continue caring for him because of non-payment of surcharges, Ogtai's son and the director of the "Turan" news agency have stated.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that on October 29, 2019, Ogtai Gyulyalyev, the head of the public alliance “Azerbaijan without Political Prisoners”, who held a press conference on the campaign against torture, was hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing. On November 8, 2020, after long-term treatment in an Istanbul clinic, the human rights defender was transported home.

According to Tabriz Gyulyalyev, Ogtai's son, upon his father's return from a clinic in Turkey to Baku, the United Directorate of Territorial Medical Facilities (UDTTMF) took over the provision of the rights defender with medical care. "However, they failed to do it in full; they practically send no doctors. Only once a doctor came; it was in February," Tabriz Gyulyalyev has noted.

According to his story, the Medical Rehabilitation Research Institute used to send two nurses per each shift, six in total, to his father.

"The nurses give injections, feed him through a catheter fixed in the abdominal cavity and make massage with special means. However, they recently said that they would not come starting from May 1, because they have received no salaries for three months," Tabriz has added.

He believes that the authorities must provide his father with high-quality medical care until he fully recovers. "He was injured in a road accident. Due to doctors' inaction and delay with a surgical, his condition worsened, and he suffered a massive cerebral haemorrhage. However, the prosecutor's office wouldn't attract doctors to liability. Despite our repeated appeal, no investigation is conducted against the doctors – we see no results thereof," Tabriz Gyulyalyev has stated.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 1, 2021 at 00:52 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.