Subject: GSP
From: Ketevan Goginashvili <[email-masked]>
To: Mariana Mkurnali <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2017 11:42:14 +0000

I.        The performance of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to which the United States and (enter country name) are party. [NOTE: The United States is party to BITs with eleven Alliance member countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Egypt, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Ukraine.

A.      Insert information describing benefits or opportunities created by the treaty that have helped American workers or domestic manufacturers, farmers, or ranchers; improved intellectual property; increased the rate of innovation in the United States; or enhanced research and development in the United States.

B.      Insert information describing fair treatment by your country which has helped American workers or domestic manufacturers, farmers, or ranchers; improved intellectual property rights; increased the rate of innovation in the United States; or enhanced performance of research and development in the United States. (include information describing protection of rights of U.S. persons investing abroad)

1.      Increasing population’s access to medical care and improvement of its quality are the main priority of the Government of Georgia. The strong political will was translated into an unprecedented, expansion of budgetary allocation for health, almost 3-fold expansion of budgetary allocation for health (from 432 million Georgian Lari in 2012 to 800 million Georgian Lari for 2016).

The second major step towards securing enjoyment of health rights in the country was the launch of a Universal Health Care Program in February 2013. Which has led to a major expansion in population entitlement to publicly financed health services. We have remarkable achievements in three years: Significant reduction in unmet need, better overall financial protection and improved user experience.

2.      One of the obvious examples of increased access to expensive pharmaceutical products was the launch of the hepatitis C treatment program. In 2015, Hepatitis C elimination program has launched, with greatest efforts of the Government of Georgia, the US Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization and with support of the pharmaceutical company "Gilead". Since April 2015, patients with hepatitis C are provided with pre-treatment diagnostics, coverage of diagnostics for monitoring in the process of treatment, and treatment of hepatitis C with the latest generation of expensive medicines (Soposbuvir, Farvoni, Interferon and Ribavirin).  The second phase of Hepatitis C elimination begin in June, 2016. The Government expand the program and include 20 000 patients.

3.      To increase access to medicines for chronic patients in order is another important milestone in an unprecedented joint program of the Ministry and the City Hall in 2016, which includes providing an expensive drugs trastuzumabit (hertseptini) of treatment for HER2 + Receptor positive Women with breast cancer.

4.    For efficiency and improvement of the quality of Maternal and child health, in 2015 MoLHSA started piloting perinatal regionalization process in two regions (Imereti and Racha-Lechkhumi). This health systems organization and quality improvement reform was launched with support of USAID and expanded to hole country in 2016. Perinatal regionalization envisages providing each patient quality of maternal and neonatal health services at right and right time. Expansion of the project is very important for the country for achievement SDG Goals of reducing maternal and infant mortality.

Ketevan Goginashvili, MPH

Head of Health Policy Division

Health Care Department

Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs

144 Tsereteli Ave

Tbilisi 0119, Georgia

Tel: +995 32 251 00 38 ext 1102

Mob: 995 577717984