Expats living in Turkey who have lived here through the pandemic have voiced their admiration for turkey’s healthcare system and its Covid vaccination campaign.
Videos posted online by Turkey’s Communications Directorate show Italian, British, German and Greek nationals, who have settled down in coastal provinces of Izmir, Mugla, Balikesir and Antalya said that they are favorable to Turkey’s healthcare system compared to that of their own countries.
They have stated “We are very grateful to all our public officials and healthcare professionals, who do their work in an effort, that would set an example to the world in the fight against coronavirus,” Fahrettin Altun, the directorate head, said on Twitter.
Since Turkey launched a mass inoculation drive in mid- January, Turkey has administered over 43.6 million doses of vaccines.
Turkish society has been very careful about measures for the pandemic. “In Turkey, they look after the elderly who can’t go out shopping”, said the German national, Michael Wigant, who resides in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya. “What the government have done in Turkey during shutdown was much better than what was done in Germany”, he said
“Unlike Germany, vaccination is done better and is based on your age.
We feel safer here than in Germany. That’s why we are staying here”, he said.
Stressing the advantages of the Turkish healthcare system, he said “In Germany you wait two months for an X-ray, but only 20 minutes here”.
“I don’t know why the situation in Germany is so stressed, but in my opinion, the healthcare system in Turkey is better than in Germany” he said.
Italian national Carlo Brivio, who now resides in Izmir on the Aegean, said he had thought about going back to Italy to be vaccinated, but that when he spoke with his friends, the vaccination situation there sounded quite uncertain.
His wife called a local Turkish doctor to learn more about the vaccinations, and the doctor invited them both to get their jabs, Brivio added,” I couldn’t believe it”.
Stressing how easy it was to get a vaccination appointment, Tudor Hughes, a Welshman who came to the coastal resort of Mugla with his wife Barbara said “The vaccination process was really quite simple. You can call on the telephone or online on the computer to make your own appointment”, he said, “It was really simple to use”.
Yiannis Yiatilis, a Greek national living in Turkey’s western province of Balikesir, said “It was very easy to get an appointment. When my day came, we went to the hospital and everything was done perfectly. Everything was clean and nice. We didn’t have to wait for even two minutes. It was done very quickly, very efficiently. I’m very happy about it.”
Turkey has been administering over 1 million shots of the Covid vaccine in 24 hours according to official figures.
More than 30 million people have received their first doses, while over 15 million are fully vaccinated, the health ministry said.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unveiled Turkovac, the name for the country’s indigenously developed Covid 19 vaccine candidate. The vaccine development program is now in Phase 3 clinical trials on volunteers, starting at Ankara City Hospital in the country’s capital.