Foreign national medics to work at health centers in Turkey

ANKARA

Foreign national health sector personnel will be able to work at designated health centers after their proficiencies are approved by the Turkish Health Ministry, according to a new regulation that has recently been put into effect. 

The regulation includes all foreign health personnel, including obstetricians, but excludes dentists, pharmacists and hospital orderlies.  

Meanwhile, police in the southern province of Adana detained seven people, including a Syrian doctor, who opened a health center and a pharmacy without official permits. 

Carrying out a raid on some eight so-called health centers, which included a maternity center, a pharmacy and a dentistry center, police discovered one of the locations used to be a butcher’s shop and still had blood stains and meat hooks on its walls.    

Confiscating two truck-loads of medicine found in the center’s pharmacy, police also raided an apartment which was used as a dentistry treatment center, with 20 people waiting inside to receive services. 

In another house raided by police teams, police found a Syrian woman who offered services as a gynecologist. 

“I am not a doctor, I do not get patients. They come [to me],” said the woman, defending herself.