Turquie

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Turkey underwent a very ambitious reform programme  in 2003, the so-called 'Health Transformation Programme'. Access to healthcare in Turkey has greatly increased with the attainment of Universal Health Coverage, as also demonstrated by improvement in health outcomes, most notably around maternal and child health and infectious diseases. However, despite these significant achievements, Turkey has a significant way to travel to deliver high-quality health services to its population. Governance of the health system is highly centralised and typified by directive control from the Ministry of Health, and information collected in different part of the system is not always fully exploited. The OECD Review of Health Care Quality in Turkey recommends a number of changes to address these shortcomings. The key recommendations are that: i) Turkey needs to develop robust systems to standardise and monitor the quality of care, encourage continuous professional development and incorporate patient views; ii) some loosening of the governance structure would be welcome, to allow regions greater flexibility to assess and respond to local health needs and to continue to provide health workers with incentives for improve quality; iii) data on health sector activity and outcomes need to be made more available and more usable for individual patients and clinicians, while greater effort is needed to increase the robustness of Turkey’s information systems at national level and harmonise performance measures to OECD and other international comparators.

This comprehensive review of Turkey's health care system shows that health status has improved rapidly in Turkey in recent decades, partly as a result of higher health spending. It describes the introduction of an ambitious Health Transformation Programme in 2003 which brought universal health insurance to Turkey in 2008 and has begun the process of public hospital reforms and the rolling out of family-practitioner services throughout the country. Challenges remain, however, including completing the Health Transformation Programme and ensuring that the new health system provides value for money and stays affordable. This report analyses these challenges and sets out policy suggestions aimed at addressing them.