Turkey's health expenditures jumped 17.4 percent in 2017, compared to the previous year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said yesterday. According to TurkStat, the total costs reached TL 140.65 billion ($38.53 billion) last year, up from around TL 120 billion in 2016. Health expenditure per capita increased to TL 1,751 in 2017 from TL 1,511 in 2016, it added.
The proportion of total health expenditure in the country's gross domestic product was 4.5 percent last year and 3.5 percent in 2016. "Out-of-pocket health expenditures made by households for treatment, pharmaceuticals etc. reached TL 24.4 billion with an increase of 22.7 percent in the year 2017," the statistics body said. "The proportion of household health expenditure to total health expenditure was 17.1 percent in the year 2017." The proportion of general government health expenditure to total health expenditure was 78 percent last year and 78.5 percent in 2016.
Turkey operates 894 hospitals, 7,950 family health care centers, 2,700 emergency health stations and 171 community mental health centers with around 1 million medical personnel. The number of doctors per 100,000 people was 186 in the country which is below the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 351 per 100,000 people. Life expectancy at birth is 78 in Turkey while child mortality rate per 1,000 live births was at 6.8 while the maternal mortality rate per 1,000 live births was at 14.6. Turkey provides free health care and has a general health insurance system that covers all citizens.
