Turkish Medical Association protests Health Ministry’s 2022 budget

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The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) has shared its evaluations and criticism as to the Health Ministry's 2022 budget.

Announcing its opinions and requests about the budget in nine points, the TTB has said, "The budget of the Ministry of Health has been set as only 6.6 percent (around 116 billion TRY) of the general budget of 2022. In fact, this rate should be at least over 10 percent of the general budget in accordance with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic conditions."

The TTB has also raised concerns that the share of the treatment services is 74.5 billion TRY (64 percent) while the funding allocated to preventive medicine is only 38.7 billion TRY (33 percent): "It needs to be remembered that outbreaks can be ended only at the primary level."

'Lion's share to city/company hospitals'

The TTB has criticized that the "lion's share" in the Health Ministry's budget has been allocated to the city/company hospitals again under the name of "service procurement" and "investment use fee".

Accordingly, the TTB has listed its criticisms as follows:

• The fact that resources have been allocated to a handful of bosses instead of university hospitals is yet another indicator of the collapse in the healthcare system.
• The fact that long-established training-research hospitals which receive thousands of difficult cases and operate in an economic manner are not provided with enough resources in the Health Ministry's budgets indicates that resources are used unequally.
• There is not enough arrangement about the improvement of family health centers' buildings and medical equipment in the Health Ministry's budget. In that sense, the Health Ministry has apparently turned a deaf ear to the demands of family health center workers.
• The vast majority of the Health Ministry budget, made thanks to the taxes collected from laborers, is transferred to a handful of capitalists. The share of health laborers is not even more than one quarter.
• In the Health Ministry Budget, before the Transformation in Healthcare Program, the rate of personnel expenditures, which was 70 percent in 2003, dropped to as low as 33 percent.

TTB has also listed its requests about the budget:

• For the healthcare workers, whose workload has increased as a result of the Transformation in Healthcare Program and the outbreak, 3600 and 7200 additional indicators should be included in the Health Ministry's Budget. A single and sufficient wage which is above the poverty line and that increases the pensions should be given.
• The Ministry of Health should allocate enough budget to university and training-research hospitals, family health centers and preventive medicine, not to the bosses of city/company hospitals.

(KÖ/SD)