I. ULUSLARASI SAGLIK TURIZMI KONGRESI

By this congress Turkey has come to a serious turning point in 2008 from the point of health tourism.
It should be paved the ways for employing foreign medical doctors required by the sector to overcome the medical doctors’ shortage.
In the last legislative arrangement of the Health Ministry it should be bestowed favor on planning of the hospitals used for health tourism.
The facilities providing health tourism services must be accredited and have educated staff with foreign languages and inspected.
In addition to the Health and the Culture and Tourism Ministries the attendance of the heads of the related commissions to the congress make the intentions and efforts of supports to the sector obvious.
The importance of health tourism for our country has been displayed by the attendance of the representatives of the government, CSA and sector.
As a consequence of speeches during the congress it has been deduced that health tourism is needed to be under three main headings and evaluated as MEDICAL TOURISM, THERMAL TOURISM and ELDERLY TOURISM.
The progress of health tourism in the world should be traced and the related knowledge should be shared. The public, CSA and private sector partnership and the related education conferences should be continued. Our association will be a pioneer on this issue.
It has been understood that health tourism is one of the most significant alternative tourism types to expand tourism activities to 12 months.
Our country has outstanding potentials for health tourism owing to its climate, natural beauties, cultural heritage, geopolitical position, thermal resources and current progress in health in recent years.
Establishing elderly care resorts and districts and putting them into health tourism service carry great importance. (Our plateaus rather fit in this purpose).
The world population is growing old everyday. The elderly population rate in the world approaches to the 20% of the total world population. The young population of our country is an important source that will continue for long years. We can give the best elderly care services to the elderly coming from abroad by our hospitable culture, traditions and customs.
The turnover of the world health tourism is around USD 100 billion. For our country 10% of this turnover, USD 10 billion/per year revenue has been targeted within upcoming 3-4 years.
New departments at vocational high schools and vocational school of higher education should be opened to educate the staff serving to elderly and handicapped tourism.
In order to attract health tourism investment to our country publicity and subsidy should be made more attractive.
From now on our association has decided to organize the Health Tourism Congress in Spring months of each year with the attendance of the government and the sector representatives.
In parallel to the recommendations and requests from the most of the congress’ attendants the need for holding symposiums, panels and consultation meetings in specific regions with specific topics has been come up by the congress in 2009. (For instance, The coverage of international agreements and our expatriates in Europe, The place of Cappodocia in health tourism, The place and challenges of thermals in health tourism etc).