Turkey Emerges as "Global Hotspot for Healthcare"

Turkey is steadily emerging as "one of the hottest healthcare markets in the global arena", according a new report by Frost & Sullivan.   The country has doubled its healthcare spending in the last 10 years, reaching $62.3 billion, with its large population of 74.7 million and an increasing patient base.    Healthcare has been a key focus of the Turkish government, who came to power in 2002 and launched a transformation program focusing on national health insurance. While the government’s healthcare budget doubled during the reform period, the coverage of public insurance has increased from 50 percent of 2003 to 100 percent in 2015, the report states.     At a breakfast briefing in Milan, Italy, this month, Philipp Reuter, Director South Europe and Turkey at Frost & Sullivan, pointed to Turkey's "significant socio-economic transformation in the past ten years". He explained: "Between 2005 and 2015, the number of patients for various chronic diseases has doubled in [Turkey], reaching nine million diabetes and one million cancer patients."   Reuter concluded that Turkey has "vast potential for all types of companies accross the healthcare spectrum". "Having always been regarded as a R&D hub in the healthcare industry, the country is now a huge and mostly unsaturated consumer market with significant opportunities in the area of healthcare services, innovative medical device technologies, pharma and clinical diagnostics.”