European Court recognises Georgia’s healthcare reform

Georgia has met all of its obligations outlined in the judgement of nine healthcare violations in Georgian prisons and taken necessary steps reduce the number of future violations, international officials said (resolutions: 1, 2, 3) at a special Council of Europe meeting comprising of EU member states representatives.

Georgian authorities were invited to the latest Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe meeting to inform the group of Georgia’s recently implemented healthcare reform, and how the country had addressed the issues outlined in the judgement of nine cases of prison healthcare violations, which were earlier reviewed in the European Court of Human Rights.

At the latest Committee of Ministers meeting, the group examined Georgia’s action plan and noted the country had satisfied all its obligations noted in the judgement.

The country was found to have successfully completed its two obligations to:

• a.Adopt individual measures to put an end to violations established and erase their consequences so as to achieve as far as possible restitutio in integrum (restoration to original condition); and
• b.Adopt general measures preventing similar violations.

Under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Committee of Ministers were obliged to supervise the execution of final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

At a special briefing, Deputy Corrections Minister of Georgia Kakha Kakhishvili said the Committee of Ministers’ decision was a result of the "successful” healthcare reform recently implemented by Georgia. Kakhishvili said thanks to the reform, the number of ill-treatment cases had decreased while the level of healthcare available to inmates had increased for all prisoners in Georgian jails.

The Deputy Minister also said the latest statistics revealed the number of Georgian complaints to the European Court regarding ill-treatment in prisons had decreased by 60 percent in the past two years.

Lately, public health experts claimed the level of healthcare available in Georgian prisons met the same standards of the public health sector and in some cases, such as the treatment of hepatitis C, the level of care had exceeded the public sphere.