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Comparison of Turkey and European Countries According to Basic Health Indicators

2016; Linguagem: Inglês

10.21763/tjfmpc.271087

1307-2048

Selçuk Köksal, Nurver Turfaner Sipahioğlu Turfaner Sipahioğlu, Eray Yurtsever Yurtsever, Suphi Vehid,

Global Health Care Issues

Objectives:European Union (EU) is a political and financial organization consisting of 28 countries.Turkey is a candidate country for the EU.In this study, Turkey and EU countries are compared according to 15 basic health level indicators.Expectancy of life at birth, gross national product (GNP) per capita, health expenditure per capita, share of health in national budget, population growth rate, literacy rate, infant mortality rate, under-five mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, crude birth rate, crude mortality rate, total fertility rate, physicians, nurses and number of beds per 10000 people are evaluated.Method:The data are based on The World Bank records of 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2013.Packaged software MS Excel 2010 and SPSS ver.21 are used for statistical analysis.Results:Turkey is different in terms of population growth rate, crude birth rate and fertility rate from EU countries, and this situation results in an excess of dependent young population affecting economy negatively.Gross national product per capita is only higher than Bulgaria and the share of health from general budget and health expenditure per capita is lower than EU average.Although infant mortality rate and mortality rate under-five have displayed a fast decrease since 1960, 2013 values are still higher than EU countries.Maternal mortality rate decreased over the years to be less than Romania (0.00027), and equal to Letonia (0.00020).Crude mortality rate was found less than EU countries.The reason may be attributed to the younger population of Turkey.The human resources in health field is less than EU.C o n c l u s i o n : Improving maternal and infant health, increasing the share of health from the national budget and better planning of human resources may help Turkey to get closer to EU averages of basic health level indicators.