ANKARA: Over 3,605 health facilities have been completed across Turkey over the past 18 years, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
Speaking during a planning and budgetary meeting in Parliament, Koca said 678 of those facilities are full-fledged hospitals, while 386 are additional wings to preexisting health centers.
“We have quickly completed two pandemic hospitals, each with a 1,008-bed capacity on Istanbul’s Asian and European sides. We planned those hospitals in a way so that they can still be used after the (coronavirus) pandemic is over,” he said.
“We further improved the quality of our health care by opening 13 city hospitals with a total bed capacity of 17,509 over the past three years.”
Saying that the country’s spending on health care was “quite limited” compared with several developed countries, Koca told the committee that Turkey is among the nations with the most expansive health care systems.
“We are determined to establish a sustainable health care system,” the minister said and added that 347 additional hospitals are either under construction or in the planning phase and set to be completed by 2023.
Regarding overall figures, Koca said private companies and universities are also helping the country’s health care system but that the ministry has 14,000 facilities to serve the public. Around 8,000 are community clinics, while 934 are hospitals, Koca explained, adding that some 700,000 health workers are employed by the ministry.
“Life expectancy at birth reached 78.6 years, while death rates for mothers during birth has been reduced to 13.1 in 100,000 pregnancies, while the same figure for babies declined to 6.7. The total amount of treatment costs paid by patients has been reduced by 17.3% to 16.7%. A noticeable satisfaction in health care services has been achieved,” he said.
Detailing the ministry’s policies for mothers and newborns, Koca said that more than 400 schools have been established for educating pregnant women.
“Around 98% of our mothers are delivering their babies at hospitals now. To ensure a healthy start for newborn babies, we provide iron and vitamin D supplements, as well as carrying out numerous scans for conditions,” he said.
According to Koca, Turkey also has one of the most expansive immunization campaigns with vaccines for 13 antigens offered to the public in thousands of local clinics across the country.
Virus fight: Speaking about Turkey’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic, Koca said the ministry helped establish a communication line between testing laboratories and contact tracing teams to ensure proper identification of new infections, which he called the first step of the fight. –Agenceis
