According to the Ministry of Health data for 2019, more than 10 million people travel around the world for medical treatment every year. And health tourism has reached a turnover of 100 billion dollars worldwide. Turkey is among the countries that attract the most foreign patients within the scope of health tourism together with the USA, India, Germany and Thailand. Alpha Group, which is one of the most important brands in Turkey, wants to increase its market share in health tourism and contributes to the competition of our country in this field by cooperating with CSM Medical established by German doctors in the field of health tourism.
Arab countries are the target
Following an agreement with CSM Medical, which is working on new methods of treatment as well as treating patients with existing methods, Alpha Group aims to attract more foreign tourists to Turkey in the field of health tourism. Alpha Group, which has contracts in major centres such as Kuwait, Doha, Dubai and Cairo, also aims to benefit from Germany’s technology development in the medical field.
The target for 2019 is 1 million
According to data published by the Turkish Statistics Institute, 551.748 patients visited our country in order to get treated in 2018. 66% of these patients were treated in private hospitals and 34% in public hospitals. It was stated by the Health Tourism Council that highest number of incoming patients to Turkey are from Iraq, Libya, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia. Turkey aims to increase the number of patients incoming for medical tourism to 1 million people in 2019.
They leave more currency
Compared to normal tourists coming to our country, tourists coming within the context of health tourism leave higher income. According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, a normal tourist leaves an average of $ 700 foreign currency in our country, while this figure varies between 6 to 8 thousand dollars in health tourism. The Ministry of Health is also working on health tourism. In Turkey, a total of 632 health organizations, including 44 authorized intermediary institutions, 83 public health institutions, 466 private health facilities, 19 public university hospitals, 20 foundation university hospitals, were given a certificate of authority by the Ministry of Health for health tourism.
20 million Euro cooperation
Stating that Turkey’s future looks bright in the field of health tourism, Alpha Group’s founder Muhammet Şefik Yön highlighted the following points about the company’s activities in this field: “ As Turkey, we are in a good spot in the field of health tourism. However, there is no reason why we should not come to a better position than the countries with which we compete in this field. We have the highest level and equipped facilities; our doctors are experts in their fields, and we are in a very good place in terms of equipment. We need to explain ourselves and our services better through international cooperations. For this reason, we cooperated with CMS Medical and the value of this cooperation is 20 million Euros. We are taking firm steps towards becoming a stronger brand by combining our commercial capabilities with healthcare competencies. We believe that we will add even more strength to our country in the health tourism sector with the services we will provide especially in Arab countries.”
We will continue to generate employment
Muhammet Şefik Yön said the following about Alpha Group’s vision: “ In our country, we generate employment not only in the health tourism sector but also in other sectors. Since 2016, we have increased our investments in the fields of real estate, energy and engineering. For Turkey, which is a regional trade bridge between Europe and the Middle East, Alpha Group continues to exist and produce new projects simultaneously in three continents. We have significant investments in sectors that we think are important for the future. These investments undoubtedly increase employment and also contribute to the development of our company and country.”