ESTUDAM Public Health Journal

Abstract

There has been a neoliberal change taking place for 40 years
in a lot of countries within the field of health. Beginning of the change was
based on Washington Consensus made in 1978. In this review, it was aimed to
assess the effect of the World Bank Group (WBG) on health reforms in the
example of Turkey. In the review, WBG documents, Ministry of Health of Turkey
documents and scientific literature related to health reforms belonging to
1978-2018 period were investigated, additionally related events and legislative
regulations were tabularized chronologically. 
Health reform in Turkey has spread over a long term process during the
rulerships of right-winger, left-right coalition or military coup governments
and it has been structured in the form of interventions being in a specific
order and supporting each other. The process has been accelerated substantially
and legal regulations were completed to a great extent after the Justice and
Development Party, which is a right conservative party, came into power in 2002
and remained in power for four terms. Within this period, many reports have
been written by the WBG, Loan agreements have been signed and legislative
regulations related to reform have been made. Particularly in recent years,
health reform has been actualized as a result of decentralization of the WBG
and establishment of second largest center of the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) in Turkey. WBG's impact on the
countries within the process of health reform should be observed and monitored;
and the commercialization of health care services should be controlled.