Public Health & Healthcare Infrastructure

When the Republic was proclaimed in 1923, the country had 554 physicians, 136 midwives, 86 inpatient facilities and 6,437 hospital beds — about 19,860 people per physician. Malaria affected roughly half the population and far more in some regions, while tuberculosis and trachoma were mass public-health crises. Transforming that picture was made a strategic priority on a par with industrial investment.

Key Institutions and Investments

• Central Hygiene Institute (Merkez Hıfzıssıhha Müessesesi, 27 May 1928). Founded in Ankara under Law No. 1267 with Rockefeller Foundation support, it was Türkiye's first modern public-health and microbiology institution; it took the name of Health Minister Refik Saydam in 1942. BCG vaccine was produced in 1931, serum output met national demand in 1932 so that serum imports stopped, and smallpox vaccine output met domestic demand by 1934.
• Public Hygiene Law (1930). This basic law, No. 1593, regulated the fight against epidemic diseases, compulsory vaccination and national public-health supervision.
• Numune Hospitals (1924). On 16 March 1924 parliament decided to found a Numune (model) Hospital each in Ankara, Sivas, Erzurum and Diyarbakır. In Ankara, an institution that began in 1881 as Gureba Hospital took the name Ankara Numune Hospital in 1924; today's main building was built in 1928–1933 (first the 50-bed Refik Saydam Pavilion in 1927, then the 300-bed İsmet Paşa Building).
• Haydarpaşa Numune Hospital (1936). The Haydarpaşa building, which had served medical education since 1903 (home to the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine in 1908–1933), opened as a Numune Hospital in 1936.
• Malaria campaign. At the proclamation of the Republic roughly half the population had malaria; a 1924 study put the share at 90% in coastal areas. Control centres opened in Ankara, Afyon and Adana in 1924. The Malaria Control Law No. 839, adopted on 13 May 1926, provided for control organisations, institutes and laboratories in malarial regions, training courses and the distribution of quinine to those in need.
• Tuberculosis control. The Republican era's first anti-tuberculosis association was founded in İzmir in 1923 by Dr Behçet Uz and colleagues; the Istanbul Tuberculosis Control Society followed in 1927. The national umbrella organisation (1948) and the statutory framework for TB control (Law No. 5368, 1949) belong to the post-Atatürk period; the era's effort rested largely on voluntary associations.
• Midwifery. In 1923 only 136 midwives worked in the Ministry of Health, provincial administrations and municipalities; according to ATAM journal data the number rose to 400 in 1930, 616 in 1935 and 806 in 1940. The profession was regulated by Law No. 1219 of 1928 on the Practice of Medicine and Allied Arts, whose section on midwives starts at Article 47. The figures show a corps that stayed small relative to need but grew steadily.
• Physician and hospital capacity. The number of physicians rose from 554 in 1923 to 1,078 in 1928 and 1,182 in 1930; the population per physician fell from 19,860 to 12,841 in 1928. Bed counts in Ministry of Health institutions reached 11,398 in 1930 and 13,038 in 1935. Because sources use different scopes, these figures should not be compared directly with the 86 institutions and 6,437 beds of 1923. Despite the visible increase, rural access to physicians remained limited throughout the period.

Health policy was integral to Türkiye's statist development model: a healthy and educated population was a precondition for productivity. The Central Hygiene Institute's vaccine and serum production reduced import dependence; in later years the institution also sent vaccines to China and Egypt (sources date the shipment to China to 1938 or 1940).