A line of patients and hospital workers gathered outside Sedir University Hospital in Ankara on Monday, holding empty sample bottles and demanding to see a kidney-screening bus funded with 74.6 million lira (about €1.4 million). By Wednesday, the protest had prompted a review by national health officials and brought a striking figure into public view: the vehicle travelled just 38 kilometres (24 miles) beyond hospital grounds in 14 months.
The 2024 grant, awarded by the fictional Marmara Clinical Innovation Fund, promised a mobile unit to reach towns with long waits for kidney checks. The hospital’s 2025 report credited the project with 8,420 screenings. But fleet records and the hospital’s own appointment system show no screenings on the bus, according to figures reviewed after the protest.
The bus that stayed behind
The white coach remained in a service yard on Tuesday, its broad side panels unmarked and its medical bay visible through a half-open door. A portable examination bed and sealed equipment cases were inside; the vehicle’s trip log recorded two engineering checks and a launch-day journey, but no visits to the 12 towns named in the grant plan.
Ebru Akaydın, a renal nurse who joined the protest, said patients had been told for more than a year to expect checks near their homes. “People took time off work and waited for a bus that was sitting behind a locked gate,” she said. “Now we learn that thousands of screenings were counted, but none happened on it.”
People waited for a bus that was sitting behind a locked gate.
Ebru Akaydın, renal nurse
The university says the screenings did happen, but at partner clinics rather than aboard the coach. Its hospital administration said the project had shifted to fixed locations while staff prepared the vehicle for service, and that the 8,420 figure counts completed checks at those clinics. It did not explain why the vehicle’s travel log showed so little movement or why the change was not clearly described in the annual report.
Josephine V. Ahmadi, a public-health researcher who reviewed the grant’s published targets, said the distinction mattered. “A fixed clinic may provide a useful service, but it is not the service the fund agreed to pay for,” she said. The award specified mobile screening in outlying districts, with monthly route reports and a target of 10,000 people over two years.
A grant under review
The funding covered the coach, screening equipment, staff and travel. A public payment register shows that 63 million lira had been disbursed by September; the remaining 11.6 million lira is now frozen pending verification. The hospital says equipment checks and water-system certification delayed the vehicle’s launch, while arguing that clinic-based screening kept the project’s health work on schedule.
Imran Doesburg, a public-finance specialist who examined the published payment entries, said the key issue was whether the fund formally approved the switch to fixed clinics. “If the route changed, there should be a dated decision and a clear account of what the grant bought instead,” he said. The fund has not published such an approval.
Health officials said the review would compare the grant’s route commitments, payment records and clinic data, with findings due by 4 December. They have also asked the hospital to provide a new timetable for the bus. The university says it expects the coach to begin visits before the end of November, but has not named its first destination.
For patients from smaller towns, the delay has meant another trip into Ankara for routine checks. Protesters say they will return if the bus remains in the yard next week. Akaydın said the argument was not over whether the partner clinics had helped anyone, but over why a service sold as mobile had stayed almost entirely in one place.
