Some 3,605 health facilities have been completed across Turkey over the past 18 years, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Saturday.
Speaking during a planning and budgetary meeting in Parliament, Koca said 678 of those facilities are full-fledged hospitals, while 386 are additional wings to preexisting health centers.
“We have quickly completed two pandemic hospitals, each with a 1,008-bed capacity on Istanbul’s Asian and European sides. We planned those hospitals in a way so that they can still be used after the (coronavirus) pandemic is over,” he said.
“We further improved the quality of our health care by opening 13 city hospitals with a total bed capacity of 17,509 over the past three years.”
Saying that the country’s spending on health care was “quite limited” compared with several developed countries, Koca told the committee that Turkey is among the nations with the most expansive health care systems.
