Turkey

This Middle Eastern country, in what was formerly known as the “Near East,” has traditionally been centered on the city of Byzantium or Constantinople (now Istanbul). This city served as the capital of the Byzantine Empire which controlled the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Although Constantinople was never captured by them, much of Asia Minor became part of the dominions of the Seljuk Turks, and in 1453 the Ottoman Turks took the city, making it the capital of their empire which controlled much of the Middle East and the Balkans. Their power declined in the 19th century, and ended in World War I, with the founding, in 1923, of the Republic of Turkey which covered Asia Minor (Anatolia) and a small portion of the European mainland.

A number of medical doctors of the Roman Empire came from Asia Minor, with Aresteaus born in Cappadocia, and Galen born at Pergamon. The latter was to have a very important influence in European medicine and medical thinking throughout the Middle Ages. The Byzantines had a relatively advanced system of treating patients, as did the Ottoman Turks. However the system had fallen far behind the medical progress of western Europe by the 19th century. The Crimean War (1853–1856) proved to be the impetus for both an improvement in Western nursing, with the work of Florence Nightingale at the hospital at Scutari in Turkey, as in Turkey itself with the Military Medical School staring course from 1857 with Dr. Charles Edwards remaining in Turkey at the end of the war to treat the Imperial family and lecture. The Turk Tib Cemiyeti (Turkish Medical Society) was founded in 1856 and publishes the Turkish Medical Journal.

The next great advance in the healthcare services in Turkey was during the 1920s with the founding of the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish Constitution made the government responsible for the improving of public health, and many hospitals and clinics were built in the cities and large towns. The Turkish Neuropsychiatric Society had been founded in 1914; with most of the other medical associations founded after the proclamation of the Republic. The Turkish Electro-Radio-graphical Society was established in 1924; the Turkish Surgical Society and the Turkish Microbiological Society were both established in 1931; the Turkish Urological Society was established in 1933; the Turkish Tuberculosis Society was established in 1937; and the Turkish Association of Orthopedics and Traumatology was established in 1939. By the 1950s there were programs to improve the medical care in the countryside. The result was a major fall in the prevalence of many diseases during the 1960s and 1970s.

A major medical problem in Turkey had been malaria, with up to half the population said to have been suffering from the disease in 1925 when control measures were introduced. These significantly reduced malaria, and in 1942 the Exceptional Malaria Law was enacted which introduced greater measures to prevent the mosquitoes from breeding. By 1971 there were officially only 2,000 people suffering from malaria, although the number grew to 8,600 in 1990. Most of these cases were located in Cukurova and Sanliurfa where the increased use of irrigation channels led to about 100,000 cases of malaria in 1995 resulting in another major government campaign. Malaria is now officially only present in parts of south-eastern Anatolia and also the region from Mersin on the Mediterranean, to the Iraqi border.

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