Health Ministry

Turkey?s Health Ministry has asked primary care physicians to provide the personal identity information of their psychiatric patients, in a move described by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) as a ?scandal.?

Primary care physicians across the country began a three-day strike May 20 against working on weekends, which the Health Ministry had made obligatory earlier this year. 

A day after the entire municipal council of Tilos resigned in protest at the lack of medical professionals, a doctor was dispatched to the tiny Dodecanese island late on Friday.

EMSA?, a Turkish construction firm, and Houston Methodist Global Health Care Services (HMG), announced on April 29 the launch of a partnership for Ba?ak?ehir Integrated Health Campus in Istanbul, which will have a 2,682-bed capacity. 

A fraudster has been asking for photos of women?s breasts online posing as a representative of the Health Ministry, prompting a warning from the ministry to only trust its official social media accounts.

Asking for ?a few shots? of their breasts from young women, the fraudster claimed to be a representative of the ministry working for public health. 

Greek public hospital doctors are expected to hold a work stoppage from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, their union announced on Monday.

Doctors are expected to rally outside the Health Ministry during that time in protest at delays in wage payments.

Some 4,500 medical staff will be hired, with 700 of them being posted to islands and parts of the country where there are a lack of doctors and nurses, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pledged Thursday.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras impromptu visit to the Health Ministry on Thursday was followed by a statement outside the ministry. He said that the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) government is working hard to reverse the bad climate in the health sector.

Out of the roughly 40 million tourists who visited Turkey last year, around half a million came for surgical procedures ranging from hair transplants and liposuction to cancer and orthopedic treatment, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜ?K). 

The Health Ministry is repealing a controversial legal provision that was issued three years ago ?to curb the spread of infectious diseases? but was widely condemned for stigmatizing women with HIV, particularly prostitutes.