Target for health tourism is 20 billion dollars

Hande Atılgan / ANKARA - International Health Services Inc. ( USHAŞ ) General Manager Behlül Ünver explained the projects and goals on their agenda, especially health tourism. Noting that approximately 100 billion dollars of value is created in medical tourism, 98 billion dollars in thermal tourism, and 1.2 trillion dollars in healthy life tourism in the world, Ünver stated that Turkey attracts people from 145 countries. Stating that they have an annual income target of 20 billion dollars until 2028, Ünver said, “In 2024, the income in tourism was 60 billion dollars, the amount left by a tourist was close to a thousand dollars. When we look at health tourism, there is 3 billion dollars of income, 1.5 million tourists; a tourist leaves approximately 2 thousand dollars. We aim to increase this to 3-4 thousand dollars.” Ünver pointed out that reliable service provision and diversity are essential for this.

All facilities

Ünver, who said that they will start a pilot study on utilizing public hospitals after working hours in health tourism, stated that both the provinces where health tourism is widespread and the provinces where tourism is widespread but health tourism is not practiced will be considered. Ünver said, “The primary duty of public hospitals is our citizens, this should be emphasized. That is why we did not set out to do health tourism in almost all of our hospitals, we will do a pilot application in Antalya, Edirne, İstanbul, Van, Nevşehir... There are 29 public hospitals, 15 of which are PPP, 7 of which are public capital city hospitals and training and research hospitals. Our aim is to be able to do health tourism not only in certain places but also in all health facilities.” Ünver also stated that they have established a special team within USHAŞ because disinformation about health tourism is spread from time to time.

5 thousand facilities

Reminding that membership to the HealthTürkiye platform has been made mandatory, Ünver underlined that institutions that are not registered with the platform will not be able to conduct health tourism activities as of September 26, and said, “There is a 6-month transition period. We expect approximately 5,800 facilities and 1,261 intermediary institutions to become members. The number of members is now approaching thousands. Citizens of 12 countries can follow institutions while coming to Türkiye through the platform.”

MEDICAL DEVICE

Ünver stated that a new portal called USHAŞ Plus will be launched soon, which will contribute to the promotion and sale of domestic medical products abroad, and an intermediary system will be established to enable citizens to obtain medicine from abroad.