Turkish health bosses break silence on death of British mother Beth Martin as mystery over her missing heart deepens
The Ministry of Health in Turkey has spoken out after a British mother died in mysterious circumstances on a family holiday and allegedly had her heart removed.
Beth Martin, 28, fell ill during her flight - something she initially blamed on food poisoning - and within hours of arriving in Istanbul began feeling 'delirious' and was immediately rushed to hospital.
She died the next day. Beth's family claim they were kept in the dark about the seriousness of her condition and suggested doctors seemed unaware that Beth was allergic to penicillin.
Her husband Luke, who had accompanied her on the family holiday with their two young children, was also accused of 'poisoning' his wife by the Turkish authorities and thought to be a suspect in her death.
After days of battling with officials, Luke eventually arranged for Beth's body to be flown back to the UK and taken into the care of British coroners - who later said her heart had been removed.
Beth's family has now been left desperately searching for answers about how and why she died - with Luke saying he has suffered the 'deepest level of trauma'.
And now in an agonising update, the Turkish Ministry of Health revealed Beth died after a 'cardiac arrest due to multiple organ failure' - but stopped short at explaining the exact cause of this.
Officials also said that Beth 'did not undergo any surgical procedures' during a preliminary autopsy at the hospital, but would not say whether this was also true after she was transferred to the Forensic Medicine Institute for a second autopsy.
The Health ministry said: 'The patient was recorded in the hospital records as a "forensic case" in line with the statement of Martin's wife that they may have been poisoned by a meal they ate in their country before the trip, and the initial findings.'
It added: 'A preliminary autopsy [without incision] was performed at the hospital in accordance with the forensic case procedure and his wife's request in this regard.
'The exact cause of Martin's death could not be determined with the current findings in the preliminary autopsy, which was carried out with the participation of the Public Prosecutor and the forensic medicine doctor.
'Beth Martin did not undergo any surgical procedures during her treatment at the hospital, and there was no question of any organs being removed.'
The update still leaves Beth's family with so many questions and it is still unknown whether doctors missed a problem with her heart, or failed to acknowledge her allergy to penicillin.
It has been alleged that doctors may have given her the drug before her death.
The Marmara Pendik hospital, which sits a short distance from the city's Sabiha Gokcen international airport, is facing a negligence investigation over Ms Martin's rapid and as-yet-unexplained death, according to her family.
But the Martins face a distressing six-month wait for a coroner's inquest that could give them all of the answers they desperately need.
'It has been the worst and most traumatic week of my entire life,' husband Luke wrote on social media earlier this month.
'If anyone can take anything away from this... hold your loved ones a little longer, don't sleep on an argument, take photos, take videos, tell them you love them more.'
Friend Robert Hammond has also launched a GoFundMe in support of Beth's family, which has so far raised over £240,000. On the page he laid out the hellish and traumatic ordeal in unflinching detail.
His account of the nightmare has been expanded upon by Ellie Grey, a wellness influencer who described Ms Martin as her 'very good friend' and appeared to have gone to Turkey herself to help.
Mr Hammond, writing on the page, said Ms Martin was taken to hospital on Monday April 28, where she was examined by medics and admitted.
Mr Martin then left for a few hours to take his children back to the hotel, before he was summoned back to pay for a scan upfront. He then went to be with his children as his wife was admitted into intensive care.
Her husband was, Mr Hammond says, 'banned from seeing her'.
Mr Hammond adds: 'From there, no calls and no updates despite him trying to contact the hospital to see if his wife was OK. Just silence.'
Overnight, Ms Martin was transferred to another hospital for an angiography - a type of X-ray used to show up blood vessels - due to what her family would be told were 'concerns with her heart'.
This scan reportedly showed no cause for concern, according to Ms Grey.
The hospital includes an 'International Patients Service' ward (pictured). It is not known whether Ms Martin was treated here as a British person
Ms Martin was then transferred back to the first hospital - which allegedly refused to provide paperwork to a private hospital contracted by her travel insurer.
But Mr Martin and his wife's mother, who had flown out urgently to see her, were stonewalled when they asked to see her on Tuesday - unaware of her rapidly deteriorating condition.
The crisis was complicated by the arrival of Turkish police officers at the Martins' hotel, where they handed Luke a document stating his wife had died at 9am, even as she remained on life support - still alive, barely.
Police then informed him he was suspected of poisoning her - before her death was even formally confirmed. But there was more to come.
As he watched his wife being loaded into a Turkish ambulance on Monday, Luke had told medics that she was allergic to penicillin - a common medicinal allergy affecting around one in 10 people around the world.
But doctors at the hospital did not seem aware.
Mr Hammond said: 'The doctor asked if Beth had allergies. Luke had already told the paramedics when Beth got in the ambulance that she was allergic to penicillin.
'And yet when told again, they were shocked to hear this information — they had no idea and had been treating her for hours at this point.'
On Tuesday, Mr Martin received a call from the hospital, delivering the news he had hoped not to hear: that his wife was dead, two days after complaining of an upset stomach, with no clear cause.
'How did she die? We don't know,' Ms Grey said. 'Beth was ill before she got to Turkey. She started being sick on the plane, we started thinking it was a dodgy Chinese.
'The insurance company wanted to move her to a private hospital but the public hospital in Istanbul were not cooperating, they were being slow and delaying reports and not sending information over. They stopped her.
'They transferred her to another hospital to have an angiography done but they said the heart was fine and transferred her back and still didn't transfer her to a private hospital. then she died.'
Ms Grey has suggested the hospital may have been negligent in its duty of care.
She added: 'They said they did 45 minutes of CPR but anyone who has ever had CPR or has seen CPR knows how brutal it is.
'When I saw Beth in the morgue after she had her hair in two French plaits and they were perfect. There is no way they did CPR for 45 minutes, I know that.'
While Luke was being interrogated by police, the hospital tried to pressure the family into telling them whether they planned to sue over the death and handed them a piece of paper that they refused to sign.
'All they went on about is are you going to sue the hospital, sign this bit of paper,' Ellie added.
'I said: "Is there something we should be suing for? Do you know something we don't? Because that's really suspicious".'
Medical reports, while unable to confirm how Ms Martin died, have ruled out food poisoning as the cause of her death, Ms Grey claimed.
Luke was then dragged before police, with no time to grieve, to hear accusations of poisoning his late wife. But as it dawned on officers that he played no role in her death, they dropped the charge and let him go.
The horrors, as alleged by Mr Hammond, continued: that Luke, alongside Beth's mother, was made to carry his wife's body in a zipped body bag, and threw thousands at repatriating her there and then, rather than waiting weeks for insurers.
'We got to see Beth for 30 seconds in the morgue then the guy (clicked his fingers) at us and handed us a corner of the bodybag that was zipped open and me, Beth's mum, Luke and a translator had to lift her body into a coffin,' Ellie Grey said in her video, appearing to corroborate the account.
'Losing her was traumatic enough but going over to Istanbul and seeing first hand the lack of respect and having to go the next day to the forensic examiner officer and saying "do not take any organs".
'They wanted to bury her or cremate her within 24 hours, we had to fight to repatriate her and pay ourselves.'
A GoFundMe has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the Martin family
Luke then had to deliver the agonising message to his young children that their mother was gone.
But the final shock was to come as Beth arrived into the care of British coroners - who found that she had been returned to the UK minus her heart.
'The Turkish hospital has removed it. No explanation. No consent. They have invaded her body and they have taken her heart,' Mr Hammond wrote on the GoFundMe.
Official advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) notes that Turkish coroners can take small tissue samples as well as complete organs for testing 'without the family's permission'.
'You will not automatically be told if this happens,' the advice notes.
And while they will often seek to return organs before a person's body is released, the FCDO adds, 'in exceptional circumstances, body parts might be kept without permission.'
This may well be what has happened: an exercise in brutal, opaque Turkish bureaucracy, rather than anything more untowards, even as Turkey still harbours a reputation as a global hotspot of illegal organ harvesting.
There is, it should be said, no suggestion that Beth Martin's heart has been illegally harvested.
The GoFundMe has raised over £240,000 in donations from well-wishers to help with medical bills, travel and repatriation costs, and helping Luke to build a future for his family without his wife by his side.
With financial worries now set aside, Ms Martin's friends and family are determined to fight until they get straight answers from the Turkish authorities.
'Luke has gone through something that no person should ever have to go through and he has done it with dignity and strength and pride for Beth,' Ellie said.
'I swear to you, between her family and Luke and myself we are not letting this go.
'No way am I going to let them get away with taking her heart, lying about what happened and treating her as if she was somebody with no dignity.
'We will get answers.'
An FCDO spokesperson previously said: 'We are providing support to the family of a British woman who died in Turkey and are in touch with the local authorities.'
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