“Because cadavers cannot be found in Turkey, we are importing them from the United States. Each one costs 120,000 liras,” Professor Erdoğan Şendemir from the university’s Department of Anatomy told Sputnik Turkey.
He underscored the urgent need for donations of dead bodies and complained about the local authorities’ reluctance to inform medics about dead bodies available for medical research purposes.
Professor Şendemir stressed the importance of working on dead human bodies for medical students and also for the training of highly qualified specialists.
This means that, ideally, you need to have one dead body for each group of 8 to 10 students. In reality, most of Turkish medical institutes have to make do with just one cadaver per every 150-200 students.
“A medical student needs to see all the organs and tissues in their original places and in a way that’s close to reality,” Hurriyet Daily News quoted Prefessor Şendemir as saying.
“A medical student needs to see all the variations, meaning the structural changes from human body to body. No abstract education can fill the place that is filled by a cadaver. I don’t think anybody would venture to be operated on by someone who has learned about human anatomy from photographs alone,” he emphasized.
Turkish medical institutes are currently working to persuade people to donate their bodies after death for use by medical researchers.
