Chamber of Medicine and Medical and Social Workers Union (SES) representatives in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeastern Diyarbakır province say a lack of Kurdish-language services in Turkey’s hospitals and emergency hotline constitutes discrimination and may prove fatal, Mezopotamya Agency reported on Friday.

It is impossible to treat a patient without an accurate account of their ailment, Diyarbakır Chamber of Medicine (DTO) Chairman Mehmet Şerif Demir told Mezopotamya.

The inability for a patient to express pain or discomfort in their mother tongue violates their right to treatment, Demir said.

Demir recounted the case of a Kurdish woman with breast cancer, where the woman could not communicate with her doctor, delaying her diagnosis by months which allowed the cancer to spread.

Millions of people in Turkey only speak Kurdish, thus the lack of Kurdish language medical services constitute discrimination and a rights violation, Demir said.

“As doctors, we know the right to health to be essential,” Demir said. “We demand that all obstacles against mother tongues be lifted as they prevent access to the right to medical services.”

SES Diyarbakır Chapter Secretary Mehmet Nur Ulus said it is necessary to speak the patient’s language in order to treat them.

“Patients don’t speak Turkish, and doctors don’t speak Kurdish. This issue has continued for a long time in medical services,” Ulus said.

Turkey’s emergency hotline 112 offers services in Turkish, Arabic, English, German and Russian, but not Kurdish, which violates patients’ rights, Ulus added.

“In emergency services, a five minute delay due to miscommunication can lead to the patient’s death,” Ulus said. “Lack of Kurdish language services may prove fatal.”

Diyarbakır deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Semra Güzel had brought the matter up in the parliament early in December, asking the minister of health what the government planned to offer some 20 million Kurdish people living in Turkey, predominantly in eastern and southeastern provinces.

