Deputy Minister of Health Prof. Dr. Muhammed Güven attended the “Localization of Medicines and Health Tourism” Panel organized by MUSIAD (Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association).
Delivering a speech at the beginning of the session, Deputy Minister talked about the recent developments in the health tourism.
“Health tourism has the share of 500 billion dollars out of the global tourism income. As of today, there are around 30 million international patients seeking treatment abroad. In 2023, the share of health tourism is expected to reach approximately one trillion dollars. Thus Turkey will take a significant share of world health tourism. Turkey has an attractive location donated with accessibility, natural resources and beauties, historical and cultural values and competitive price advantages. What is important is to mobilize this potential.
As the Ministry, our goal is to raise the potential of thermal health tourism, increase the number of facilities and the capacity for this purpose and increase the income consequently. In order to achieve these goals in both thermal health tourism and health tourism in general, we established International Health Services Inc. (USHAŞ) pursuant to the law no 7146. With the USHAS, which will be active in the field of international health services and tourism, services offered in our country will be promoted and coordination of public and private sector will be provided in the field of health tourism activities” said Prof. Güven.
Deputy Minister also mentioned about the localization efforts in medicines, vaccines and medical devices.
“Within the framework of localization efforts, we are intensely working on diphtheria, tetanus, pentavalent vaccine, hepatitis and varicella vaccine. As of August 2019, the introduction of adult-type tetanus diphtheria vaccine will be launched.
All production processes of this vaccine are carried out in Turkey. Our aim is to ensure complete localization of the vaccines in 2023. We aim to produce all drugs with strategic importance in our country. We are committed to providing the necessary incentives.
We should not be limited to reproducing only the products that already exist in the world. We need to carry out innovative drug studies and researches that are suitable for new technologies and developments” said Güven.
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