Ankara City Hospital was opened with the participation of the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Health Minister Dr. Fahrettin Koca and ambassadors and representatives from 45 countries.
Erdogan delivered a speech on the occasion of the opening ceremony of Ankara Bilkent City Hospital, the biggest health complex of Europe and the world's third biggest hospital which was constructed in one-go.
“We are the heirs of a civilization that considers health as the greatest happiness of the world. As soon as we came to the power, we first of all, rejuvenated the crumbling health system thoroughly, and we built our actions on four pillars, which are education, health, justice, and safety and we tried to develop our country based on those components.
As a consequence, we started the health transformation program and changed the system entirely. We have established a structure where every citizen in our country can get the best health services regardless of the place, income, and status. We modernized our hospitals from buildings to equipment. During the period of our governments, we have rebuilt a large part of the existing thousand 156 hospitals and constructed a total of 280 new hospitals. The number of our primary health care facilities increased to 15 thousand 920. We increased the bed capacity of our hospitals over 239 thousand.
We increased the number of healthcare professionals to one million 17 thousand. From the number of doctors and nurses to critical equipment such as MRI, tomography and dialysis, we have achieved significant increases in all areas. We increased the number of ambulances from 618 to 5 thousand, each equipped with the most modern equipment.
Let aside the services offered at hospitals, Turkey has become a country that can provide home care services for one million 250 thousand citizens, which is unique in the world. In the past, our citizens used to go abroad to seek treatment. Now, millions of people come to Turkey from abroad in order to receive healthcare services.
However, we were not content with this, and we pioneered the concept of city hospitals which I personally call ‘my dream’ to crown our health system.
Our goal is to render the city hospitals as the ultimate healthcare centers where all processes, from diagnosis to treatment, can be performed within the complex without any need to referring a patient to any other healthcare facility. That will eventually save both time and energy and increase quality of health services.
We have decided to engage the private sector in the process because we saw the difficulty of implementing this work with the public's possibilities and working style. We started to take the first steps from 2005 onwards. In 2007, we established a unit to carry out public-private partnership activities within the Ministry of Health. Finally, in 2013, we started the construction process of our city hospitals.
For the time being, city hospitals in Yozgat, Mersin, Isparta, Adana, Kayseri, Elazig, Eskişehir, and Manisa built with public-private partnership method started admitting patients. Adding the Ankara Bilkent City Hospital, we have reached 12 thousand 100 qualified beds, 2 thousand 831 polyclinics, thousand 999 intensive care beds and 410 operating rooms.
In the field of medicine and medical technology, we must save our country from foreign dependency and become an exporting country. We will establish a 600-acre health valley and a life science technology development zone in the region where Ankara City Hospital is located.
Construction of Etlik City Hospital continues. This hospital will be opened by the end of next year. Thus, we will settle the hospital problem of Ankara. Etlik City Hospital has a bed capacity of over 3 thousand 300.
I believe this hospital will be a brand in its own field. I would like to thank all of my health ministers who contributed this work, to my deputy ministers and to my undersecretaries. I would like to thank the contractors. I also would like to thank all our doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals on behalf of our citizens” said President Erdoğan.
Also addressing the inauguration ceremony, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said the city hospitals will stand out with their functionality and provide “ultimate health care services” cooperating with the universities to conduct educational and research activities.
Stating that Ankara City Hospital is the 9th hospital to start admitting patients, Dr. Koca provided some information about the capacity and characteristics of the hospital. “The hospital consists of 8 hospital complexes and has 700 intensive care beds. There are 131 operating rooms and 2 hybrid operating rooms which enables intervention and angiography simultaneously.”
Dr. Koca also stated that organ transplantations are performed at the city hospital as well as 8-10 open heart surgeries per day. As to the figures, 99 thousand 652 outpatient treatment, 16 thousand 66 emergency intervention and 2 thousand 663 operations were performed as of 7 February.
“We want to make this place a health valley by further expanding this location where Hacettepe, METU, Bilkent and City Hospitals and Public Health and similar laboratories are located. Steps were taken concerning allocation of the land for this purpose.
In Bilkent, a technology center focused on health will be created with R & D and production facilities, settled on a land not less than one thousand acres” added Mr. Minister.
Ankara Bilkent City Hospital currently serves in cardiovascular surgery, neurology, oncology, orthopedics and general branches. The hospital has a bed capacity of 3,704 with 131 operation rooms and 904 polyclinics.
Ankara Bilkent City Hospital will receive 30,000 patients and treat 8,000 emergency patients per day when in full capacity” added Health Minister.
After the inauguration ceremony, President Erdoğan made a brief tour at the Ankara City Hospital.
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