Turkey was ranked last among 36 European countries in access to innovative medicines, with patients able to obtain only a fraction of new treatments available elsewhere in Europe, according to a new report.
The report, prepared by healthcare data company IQVIA for the Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (AIFD) and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), examined how Turkey’s pricing and reimbursement system affects patient access to innovative medicines.
Drawing on the EFPIA Patients W.A.I.T. (Waiting to Access Innovative Therapies) Indicator 2024 Survey, which tracks the availability of innovative treatments and the time patients wait to access them, the report examined access to 173 innovative medicines in 36 European countries, including the 27 European Union member states.
Only six of the 173 medicines examined were accessible in Turkey through full public reimbursement, the report said.
It defined full access as inclusion of a medicine on the public reimbursement list.
Medicines included on Turkey’s foreign drug list and reimbursed through that channel were classified as restricted access, while medicines that could only be purchased by patients themselves were classified as available through out-of-pocket payment.
When all three categories were considered together, Turkey’s overall access rate fell from 21 percent in 2021 to 13 percent in 2024, again putting the country last among the countries examined.
Meanwhile, the European average rose from 43 percent in the previous survey to 46 percent, widening the gap between Turkey and other countries included in the study.
The findings come amid growing concerns that Turkey’s economic crisis, declining household purchasing power, long licensing procedures and the exclusion of many new-generation treatments from public reimbursement are making it harder for patients to obtain vital medicines, particularly in areas such as cancer and rare diseases.
The report also cited a separate comparison of new prescription drugs in the United States and 26 OECD countries, including Turkey, covering 287 medicines launched between 2018 and 2022.
According to that comparison, 212 of the drugs, or 74 percent, were available in the United States, compared with 149, or 52 percent, in Germany and 122, or 43 percent, in Austria, Japan and the United Kingdom. In Turkey, only 12 of the drugs, or 4 percent, were available.
The same comparison showed that new medicines accounted for 12.8 percent of total prescription drug spending in the United States and an average of 6.9 percent in the other countries examined, while the rate was only 0.5 percent in Turkey.
The report said Turkey’s current health expenditure as a share of gross domestic product rose to 4.6 percent in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic but fell to 3.7 percent in 2022, below its pre-pandemic level. The OECD average was 9.2 percent in 2022.
Pharmaceutical sales as a share of GDP in Turkey stood at 0.9 percent in 2023, below the OECD average, with the gap growing in recent years, according to the report.