Multi-purpose cash assistance and health: Evaluating the effect of the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) programme on access to health care for refugees in Turkey

Multipurpose cash transfers play a vital role in helping vulnerable (mainly Syrian) refugees to meet their basic needs in Turkey. However, they do not appear to significantly affect access to, or expenditures associated with, health service utilization. Care-seeking rates for both adult and child illness are high and around half of refugee households in Turkey report that they had no recent health expenditures. This finding is not unexpected since refugees in Turkey have good access to health services largely thanks to the Government of Turkey’s establishment of a social system that allows all refugees to benefit from free health services in public hospitals throughout the country.