Face and womb transplants revive the health tourism in Turkey

Sevket Yitik, an official from Health Tourism Department in Akdeniz University Hospital said, "Face and womb transplants in Turkey revived the health tourism. There are people from Lebanon, Tunisia, and Denmark who applied for and demanded face or womb transplant."

Yirik said that public hospitals did not provide services on health tourism field, however they served to all country with their personnel speaking Russian, Arabic, German and English.

Expressing the transplant operations in Akdeniz University were worldwide popular, Yirik said, "Face, womb and arm transplants in Turkey are curiously followed across the world. People who hear these developments in Turkey apply us. Especially, the victims of war in Lebanon apply for face transplant or esthetic surgery. We decline face transplant demands, but there are many people who come to have esthetic surgery. In addition, there are applications in cardiology, neurology, organ and marrow transplants. Lebanon is respectively followed by Iraq, other Mid-East countries and Russia."

Yirik noted that there were few tourists visiting Turkey for health tourism, adding "About 300 tourists used the health service in 2012, but number of those who came to Turkey just for having a treatment was low. However, we outpaced this number in 2013. Only in July, we accepted 84 patients and we believe this number will increase after the meetings with the intermediary institutions and hospitals."

Anadolu Agency