HEALTH TOURİSM AND GRANT SUPPORTS: DEVELOPMENT AGENCİES İN TURKEY

The reason why health tourism has become more popular in recent years is the ease of travel, technological developments and innovations in health services. This situation has made it necessary for countries to develop national strategies for health tourism. In the action plans for the Tourism Strategy of Turkey 2023, special importance is given to health tourism and it has been stated that studies will be conducted in this field. In this context, the health tourism funding announcements opened by the development agencies between 2015 and 2022 were studied through a systematic compilation method. The study attempted to identify health tourism in Turkey, the tasks and powers of the development agencies, and the development agencies' health tourism funding announcements. According to the results of the study, development agencies in Turkey have allocated 196 million TL to support health tourism in 7 years since 2015. It is expected that this support will be continued more in the future.