Work starts for Ankara’s huge government-led hospital

ANKARA

A new hospital in Ankara will be run by public-private partnerships. AA photo

The foundation laying ceremony for Etlik City Hospital has been made in Ankara as part of the government-led city hospitals project aimed at modernizing health services through public-private partnerships.

As the Justice and Development Party (AKP) pledged when it first came to power in November 2002, a historic transformation in education, health, justice and security over the last 11 years has been realized, Premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said. The hospital, which will cost 2.4 billion Turkish Liras, will provide employment to 20,000 people and host 50,000 patients daily.

“Today’s family physicians, policlinics, hospitals and medicines within arms-reach would be impossible to even imagine 11 years ago. Not only were they not available to the normal citizen, but even those with financial resources did not have the opportunity to access such care. Were there not those who were kept hostage in hospitals because they couldn’t pay for their treatment? Even our dead were taken hostage. We have come to these days from there. Is there anything like this now? Never, there cannot be. Those who cannot find their medicine or afford it are now newsworthy occurrences,” he said.

Back in September, Turkey awarded contracts worth 15.7 billion Turkish Liras (7.8 billion U.S. dollars) for the construction of 15 city hospitals and a health center to a series of mostly Turkish firms. The Health Ministry signed agreements with contractors including Turkey’s Akfen, Rönesans İnşaat, Gama Holding, Kayı İnşaat, Dia, Emsaş, Yıldızlar, Türkerler, YDA and Italy’s Astaldi.

Foundations were also laid for a hospital in Ankara’s Bilkent district on Sept. 18 and for another one in the southern province of Adana on Oct. 5.

Turkey’s healthcare industry has grown rapidly on the back of a near tripling in nominal wealth per capita over the past decade, with increasing numbers of the country’s 76 million population taking out private health insurance schemes.

In February, Parliament passed new regulations aimed at easing private sector investment in the sector.