EU cash injection boosts health care services for Syrian refugees in Turkiye

ANKARA: A new 400-bed hospital, built with €50 million ($52.5 million) of EU funding, opened to patients on Tuesday in the border city of Kilis in southeastern Turkiye.
The project, one of the largest funded by the EU, is part of the bloc’s continuing investment in health infrastructure in the country to improve medical services for Syrian refugees and their host communities. It is managed by the Council of Europe Development Bank and the Turkish Ministry of Health.
Kilis is just a few miles from the border with Syria and often witnesses exchanges of artillery fire in the civil war that has devastated its neighbor. It previously had only one public hospital, which opened in 2007, to serve the needs of both the native and refugee population.
The city’s population massively expanded as a result of an influx of refugees when the war began in Syria in 2011. There are currently about 91,000 Syrians in Kilis, a community that is more than a third of the size of the local population of 237,000. This placed huge demands on the local health care system as the existing hospital struggled to cope. The new hospital, which is equipped with the latest medical technology, will help to ease the pressure.
Kilis, like other Turkish provinces, lacked a proper mechanism for coping with refugees and distributing them more evenly when Syrians began to pour into the country more than a decade ago, said Omar Kadkoy, a migration-policy analyst at TEPAV, a think tank in Ankara. This created problems providing access to basic services and has caused social friction at times, he added.
“Therefore the new hospital in Kilis is a big relief,” Kadkoy told Arab News. “In parallel, those funding it and implementing the project should loudly communicate the overall inclusive benefits of the new hospital.”
The hospital has 24 operating rooms and offers round-the-clock emergency services. It can accommodate more than 3,000 patients at any given time and treat then using state-of-the-art health equipment, including imaging systems, an MRI facility, two dialysis rooms, 10 X-ray rooms, mammography and tomography facilities, and intensive care units. It is thought to be the biggest and most modern hospital in the region.
The existing hospital, which has 200 beds, will now used as a maternity and children’s facility for locals and refugees. In addition there are four health centers for migrants in Kilis.
In a speech at the official opening of the hospital, Ambassador Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, head of the EU delegation to Turkiye, described it as “one more EU-funded project that will have a huge impact on the growing community of Kilis.”
Kadkoy said that in addition to the health benefits, the new hospital will also provide much-needed employment opportunities.
“Taking into account the population composition in Kilis, the hospital should welcome Turkish and Syrian health care professionals,” he said. “Doing so contributes to the integration of Syrians in the labor market and pushes social cohesion forward in a practical way.”
The EU said it has provided more than €10 billion in funding for Syrian refugees and their host communities since 2014, €1 billion of which was earmarked for health care.
Under the flagship SIHHAT project, worth €720 million, the EU and the Turkish Ministry of Health worked together to set up several mental and physical health facilities in areas across the country with high concentrations of refugee. They employ more than 4,000 health workers and support staff, including Syrian nurses and doctors, as well as bilingual guides to assist refugees during medical consultations. The EU said more than 300,000 refugees have so far benefited from these facilities.
The EU also provided €40 million of funding for a 250-bed hospital in the southern province of Hatay-Dortyol, where there are large numbers of Syrian refugees. It opened last summer.
Brussels invested €90 million in a project called “Strengthening Healthcare Infrastructure for All,” which included the construction of dozens of health centers for migrants, the renovation of existing centers and hospitals, and the provision of equipment for new physiotherapy and rehabilitation units in existing facilities.
The EU said its support for Turkiye’s health sector will continue next year, with a particular focus on cancer treatment and mitigating the effects of climate change on health.