Successful health system preparedness dissemination event in Türkiye

15 May 2025

ReBUILD’s Wesam Mansour from LSTM and her colleague, Dilek Dede from Istanbul University, Türkiye, recently held a dissemination meeting in Istanbul where they presented the findings of their study, Exploring health workforce preparedness for shocks in Türkiye. The research focused on the health system’s preparedness and response to shocks, specifically the 2023 earthquake, using local-level health workforce management systems as a tracer for the wider health system.

The pair met with representatives from AFAD (Disaster and Emergency Management Authority), the Turkish Ministry of Health, the National Medical Rescue Team (UMKE) and academics from Turkish universities to relay the findings of their study and discuss the next steps. They outlined the government efforts to respond to the quake and how they were received by local authorities and i/NGOs in the earthquake-affected study districts. They also discussed the shortcomings of the overall response, and how they should be addressed in future.

The findings – which will be published soon – were enthusiastically received. Türkiye is an earthquake-prone area (evidenced by the quake in the city just two days after this meeting) and there was a recognition of the need to expand the study to examine the emergency responses in other cities, including Istanbul. New and follow-on work was proposed including a political economy analysis and the application of assessment tools like the UN’s Public Health Resilience Scorecard [opens new tab] to gauge the emergency readiness of public health facilities in earthquake regions.

A paper and policy brief on the findings will follow soon – watch this space.

Further information

Video presentation: WesamMansour explores health workforce preparedness for shocks in Turkey using the country’s response to the 2023 earthquakes as a measure – watch here.