It was, however, not too long ago that people in Turkey were used to frequently seeing in news the heartbreaking stories of pregnant women or patients dying as they were transferred from one place to another on homemade stretchers pulled by mules due to the lack of an appropriate healthcare facility in these regions. Those regular stories used to tell how people had to sell their livestock, tractors or even their homes to cover healthcare expenses and that they had to travel west just to have a simple tomography.
State investments, however, have built nearly 100 modern hospitals and over 250 smaller healthcare centers in these two regions since 2003, making the medical care provided there attractive to people from neighboring states, as well as western Turkey. Now people do not have to sell off their property to have themselves or a member of their family taken care of at a hospital in İstanbul or Ankara because they can get the same quality service in Turkey's East or Southeast. And, if necessary, even ambulance aircraft are at their service, with all expenses paid by the government.
“People were previously charged even for an ambulance here. Now they get to board an ambulance jet without having to pay anything at all,” says Sait Avar, who heads the provincial health directorate in Diyarbakır, one of the most populous provinces in the region, with nearly 1 million people, in remarks to Today's Zaman.
The chief physician at the Diyarbakır Training and Research Hospital, Yusuf Yağmur, also points to the increasing number of foreigners who come to receive “high-quality medical attention at a reasonable price.” His hospital's patients are primarily from Iraq, Iran and Syria, but people from other countries in the Middle East also come to Diyarbakır.
Orhan Çetinkaya, Avar's counterpart in the province of Van, which borders Iran with its more than 1 million inhabitants, also praises the progress the two regions have made in the field of healthcare in the past decade. “Thanks to an expanded group of experts and investment, people now receive medical care where they reside. The 510-bed hospital that started serving people last year is now working with the comfort of a five-star luxury hotel,” he told Today's Zaman.
However, for the government, the mission is yet to be accomplished, since investment continues to pour in to the East and Southeast. The Ministry of Health has earmarked TL 320 million ($175 million) to construct 48 more hospitals in the two regions. |
Source : todayszaman.com
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