Science, Industry and Technology Minister Nihat Ergün has stated that the government is preparing to establish the necessary infrastructure for producing its own medicines and medical equipment inside the country instead of importing them.
Minister Ergün announced during an interview with Today's Zaman that the government is currently working on a project to establish the infrastructure to produce domestic medicines, vaccines, biomaterials, diagnostic medical devices and other medical equipment, stating: “We [the government] aim to turn Turkey into an important center where prominent clinical pharmaceutical research will be done, new molecules and new drugs will be developed.”
Stating that strategies to achieve this goal will be discussed during a “Medical Biotechnology Conference” to be held next week, Ergün said that each year billions of Turkish liras are spent on importing healthcare equipment and medicines to Turkey.
“Turkey spent TL 5 million on importing medical drugs in 2011 while TL 1.7 million was spent on importing biomedical materials in the same year. In contrast to these amounts of money, only TL 700 million was obtained from the exportation of medical materials by the Turkish government in 2011,” Ergün also noted.
Ergün stated that the healthcare sector was determined as the one of the sectors in which the government needs to improve during the 25th meeting of the Supreme Council for Science and Technology (BTYK) held in January under the presidency of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
He also added that the Science, Industry and Technology Ministry has set to work on strategies and possible projects to achieve the goal determined during the meeting through cooperation with the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).
The minister also stated that a total of 1,200 proposals from nongovernmental organizations, universities and private sector representatives have been submitted to TÜBİTAK so far, adding that TÜBİTAK is currently assessing and analyzing those proposals. |
Source : worldbulletin.net
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