Health Minister Dr. Fahrettin Koca met with representatives of newspapers, TV, agencies and magazines in a press conference organized at the Ministry. Providing information about the prospective regulations in the field of health and targets of the Ministry, Dr. Koca then answered questions of health reporters.
Attended by a total of 40 reporters from printed and visual press agencies, the meeting provided a venue to discuss new law, city hospitals, domestic production of medicines and medical devices, digitalization of health services, fighting with tobacco use and healthy lifestyle, etc.
Explaining the vision of the Ministry as “a Turkey where the whole community adopts the healthy lifestyle, right to health of every individual is protected, and everyone can access to timely and well-quality health services”, Dr. Koca further added that this can only be achieved through mobilization of all national resources including universities, public and private sector, and development of an efficient, equitable and sustainable health system that can reach even the remotest areas of the country, promotes healthy life for the whole society and meets needs of the individuals by respecting their habitudes, beliefs and expectations. Dr. Koca continued his statement as follows:
“We should raise the healthcare professionals who will be able to use health technologies of the future, not the healthcare professionals that we need today. We will develop a service model associated with performance management by making the labor, process and technologic effectiveness measurable and comparable.
Health is not the responsibility of only a specific area. We cannot improve health indicators of the society without a full-scale health movement. Therefore, we will make efforts to develop “multi-sectoral health responsibility” by integrating this in the agenda of all structures and sectors. We prefer that individual and civil groups be not only the health service consumers but also health lawyers by raising awareness. Thus we may create a health management model adopted by the entire community.
We will strengthen the family medicine system through enlarged team work and bidirectional applications – communication with hospital. Hereby, we target to decrease applications to hospitals for the problems that can be solved at primary healthcare.
Through the newly opened city hospitals, we aim to create a synergy with the universities, and present the citizens high-quality health services with the latest technology, by eliminating the need of travelling for health purposes.
We will turn Turkey into a base of medical tourism through the new service model, and create added value for our country and accelerate the returns on the investments.
The rapid development in our health system gives Turkey the opportunity to be a focus for medical tourism in the world. As a result, we will be able to provide trainings at our universities in the field of health sciences, which is an important gain for health diplomacy and an economic contribution for Turkey. We also attach great importance to local manufacturing of vaccines, medicines and medical devices.
Following the question-answer section, the meeting ended.
© 2025 Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Health All rights reserved.
