Turkey has decided to facilitate Pakistanis patients to get organs transplanted and other treatments in its hospitals, reflecting huge potential for medical tourism between the two countries.
On the conclusion of visit of two renowned doctors from Turkey's Acibadem hospitals, who provided free consultation to Pakistani patients of congenital heart defects (CHD) and liver diseases in special OPD sessions, shared huge potential of medical tourism between Pakistan and Turkey. They believed that mutual cooperation in health sector can benefit common man.
Because of the initiative a large number of patients, who wanted to go to India for a number of treatments including organs transplant, have got an option to opt Turkey for the surgeries and transplants, Turkish doctors said.
According to the details shared by these doctors of Acibadem hospitals, "Not only patients can come to us but they can also contact us through electronic ways of communications like emails and social media to get advice for the treatments and how they can mitigate their sufferings. Their reports would be thoroughly examined and they would be advised regarding different options of treatment," said Professor of Oncology Dr Ozlem Er, who is associated with Acibadem hospital, Turkey.
It is worth mentioning that Acibadem healthcare is a leading group of healthcare facilities founded in 2007 and located in Istanbul, Turkey.
Talking to media persons, Dr Ozlem said that early detection of disease is the key for the success of treatment. A session also held titled "Cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey" from 5th to 8th October in Istanbul to give awareness to Pakistani doctors and patients that how patients would be facilitated during their stay and while getting treatment.
As a large chunk of Pakistani patients go to India for liver transplant but have been suffering due to unannounced ban on medical tourism by India, the event mostly revolved around the liver transplant which is a complicated surgery and needs special care to avoid infections.
Professor Dr Hamdi Karakayali, a transplantation surgeon belong to Acibadem hospital, said that in the hospitals, 845 liver transplants have been conducted with success rate of 90 percent.
"In 80 percent transplants a living donor had donated a part of liver to a patient. However in 20 percent cases we got the liver from dead bodies as deceased persons had already mentioned in their wills that they would donate body organs after death," he said.
It is worth mentioning that some time donor, which is usually relative of patient, cannot donate organ to patient because of difference of blood groups. In that case donor of first patient would donate the organ to second patient and donor of second patient would donate the organ to first patient. Hospitals make pools to maintain the data for cross transplantation.
Another surgeon Dr Remzi Emiroglu said that the Turkish hospitals have been getting patients from different countries.
He told, "We have interpreters in 24 languages, including Urdu, so patients and their attendants would not face any language barrier," he said. Acibadem healthcare group has as many as 21 Hospitals with 23,000 employees and have three jet air ambulances to bring patients, in case of emergency, from different countries. In year 2018 as many as 5 million patients visited hospitals and 139,000 surgeries were performed.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2019
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