Healthcare Support by TİKA for North Macedonia

Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) provided a bone densitometer to the endocrinology department of the City General Hospital 8th September in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia.

With the delivery of the machine to the hospital, the opening of the first osteoporosis center in the City General Hospital 8th September was also held.

Fatmir Mexhiti, the Minister of Health of North Macedonia; Muhammed Ünal, TİKA’s Head of Departments in the Balkans and Eastern Europe; Halim Ömer Söğüt, TİKA’s Coordinator in Skopje; and Prof. Dr. Hristijan Kostov, the Director of the City General Hospital 8th September, attended the event.

Minister Mexhiti, in his speech, thanked TİKA for the support provided and said, "By bringing the bone densitometer into service, the conditions in osteoporosis diagnosis and treatment will be improved. One of the biggest challenges we face in healthcare services is ensuring timely access to services for our patients. We will be able to deal directly with this challenge owing to this machine."

TİKA’s Head of Departments in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, Ünal, indicated that they have been operating in North Macedonia since 2005 and noted that 1200 projects and activities have been carried out so far.

Sharing that 30 of these projects were in the healthcare sector, Ünal said, "Today, we have gathered here for the delivery of the bone densitometer for our esteemed healthcare workers to use. We are happy to give this machine, which can be found only in some leading private hospitals, to a public institution, a public hospital."

Explaining that the center consists of a polyclinic with a bone densitometer necessary for the diagnosis of osteoporosis, the Director of the City General Hospital 8th September, Kostov said, "It is the first time since the hospital’s 50-year history that there has been an osteoporosis center, a diagnostic procedure to measure the density of the bone tissue."

Being one of the most important medical institutions in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of North Macedonia, and providing the whole country, especially the capital which has a population of 500 thousand, healthcare services with its 1200 healthcare workers, the City General Hospital 8th September’s endocrinology department offers about 4.000 patient healthcare services per year. The machine’s provision by TİKA will ensure the opening of the only osteoporosis center in the country and is expected to double the number of patients who will benefit from health services in this field.