Georgia praises WHO’s revised data about air pollution in the country

The National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has welcomed the World Health Organisation’s new report in which Georgia’s results in terms of healthcare and air pollution level have shown an improvement. 

The improved indicators are the result of joint efforts by Georgia and WHO during last two years, the NCDC said.

"Georgia, with its macroeconomic and health indicators, is not far away from the results of several middle-income European countries while the air pollution level is not above that of the European median rate. Accordingly, naming Georgia as the country with the highest mortality rate due to air pollution in the Health Statistics 2016 report was unacceptable,” the NCDC said, adding that on the request of the Georgian Ministry of Health and Labor a special mission of the World Health Organisation visited Georgia and met with several entities aiming to study the current situation in 2016.

The mission has revised the data from September 2016 and published the renewed statistics. Moreover, works have continued for analysing the shortcomings in the methodology based on Georgia’s case, according to NCDC. 

The latest round of consultations were held in May and the final results reflected were in the newest report of WHO - Health Statistics 2018 which says that Georgia ranks 70th among 194 countries by the indicator of mortality due to air pollution. The country was ranking 4th by the same indicator last year due to outdated data used by the researchers, Ministry of Environment and Agriculture said.