Friday, July 26, 2013

Turkish health tourism industry welcomed 250000 foreign patients

Turkey's focus on health tourism is showing its benefits. In the last 4 years, the number of foreigner patients coming to Turkish private and public hospitals for treatment has increased 3 fold from 74,000 in 2008 to 250,000 in 2012. Following the increase in numbers, Turkish Health Ministry has increased translation services provided to patients from 4 languages to 6 languages: English, Arabic, Russian, Persian and French.

With this 3 fold increase, Turkey is now in top 10 in terms of health tourism. The top five patient sending countries to Turkey are Germany, Russia, Azerbaijan, The Netherlands, Iraq and France. Most patients come to Turkey for eye operations, cancer treatment, orthopaedy, cardiology, brain surgery, plastic surgery and dental works. Turkey's target is having 500,000 health tourists in 2015 and making revenue of 7 billion USD from this niche tourism.

Turkey is maximum 3.5 - 4 hours flight away from European destinations as well as Middle East and provides a high quality medical infrastructure and well trained personnel with significantly lower costs compared to Europe. As a European Union candidate, the country has shaped its health sector a lot in the recent years which helps driving demand for its health tourism offers from many countries.

With the motto of "holiday and treatment all together in Turkey", Turkey Ministry of Health provides a web site to help health tourists to find their way in the country.

As of 2010, there were a total of 111.211 doctors, 31.978 of them being practitioners, 58.258 of them being specialists and 20.975 of them still continuing their education in medical expertise. 63.622 of these doctors work at the Ministry of Health, 25.015 of them work in universities, while 22.574 of them work in the private sector.

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