A panel on “Health in the Republican Era” was organised at our university. The panel organised by the Faculty of Medicine was held on Friday 27.10.2023 at 14.00. The panel was chaired by Prof. Dr. Dilek Sema ARICI, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and the speakers were Prof. Dr. Hatice Nil SARI, Head of the Department of History of Medicine and Ethics, Biruni University Faculty of Medicine, and Prof. Dr. Nuran YILDIRIM, Head of the Department of History of Medicine and Ethics, Department of Basic Medical Sciences, Bezmialem University Faculty of Medicine. The panel started with the opening speech and continued with a moment of silence for Atatürk and the martyrs and the singing of the National Anthem. Then Prof. Dr. Hatice Nil SARI and Prof. Dr. Nuran YILDIRIM were invited to the stage to make their speeches.
Prof. Dr. SARI: Changes in Health Policy from the Establishment of the Republic to the Present
Prof. Dr. SARI, who took the stage, started her speech by saying “First of all, happy Republic Day to all of us, may the Republic of Turkey exist forever.” At the beginning of the Republic period and even before its establishment, Atatürk and his staff had taken action on what needed to be done in the field of health. SARI expressed how much importance Atatürk and the Republic of Turkey attached to health and said: “They were both fighting a great war and thinking about how the health system should be set in motion.” “The first aim of the state is to take preventive health measures and to ensure that there is no person that does not receive health services,” SARI said, She said that the primary reason for this was the presence of epidemics as a result of the migrations during and after the war. SARI emphasised that the number of doctors, which was already limited, was gradually decreasing and said, “Wars and infectious diseases caused the death of many doctors.” She said that with the first years of the Republic of Turkey, there was a strong need for doctors, especially female doctors. Continuing her speech by expressing the measures taken due to such high mortality rates in the early years of the republic, SARI said, “The state takes over this situation and takes various measures to increase the population in a healthy way.” In this direction, she said that free health services were provided and even medicine fee was not requested from poor patients.
Prof. Dr. YILDIRIM: Medical Education of Girls in the Republican Period and Our First Female Physicians
Starting her speech as “How women started their medical faculty education, who are the first female physicians of the republic and what they have done.”, YILDIRIM mentioned the existence of women working in the field of health in the Ottoman period, stating that their number was quite small and that they worked like health professionals, not doctors, and said, “These people were mostly involved in women’s diseases. However, they carried out treatment services without gender discrimination and were trained with master-apprentice relationship.” She stated that the medical doctors in this period were generally non-Muslims, but in the last era of the Ottoman Empire, after the Tanzimat Edict, foreign women physicians came from abroad to earn money. She continued the speech by saying, “Since the institutions providing medical education in the Ottoman period did not accept female students, they had to receive education in places such as America and Europe.” In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, female students graduated from Haydarpaşa Faculty of Medicine and Istanbul Faculty of Medicine. She continued her speech by emphasising the importance of women in the field of health.
