WHO/Europe assists Georgia in developing sustainable financing models for people-centred TB care
WHO
A team of experts from WHO/Europe has provided recommendations to Georgia on developing financing mechanisms to support the country’s move towards providing tuberculosis (TB) care in outpatient settings, an important step in providing people-centred care.
The technical team drew up the recommendations following an assessment of TB services in the country on 5–6 October 2017. The team visited TB hospitals and outpatient care providers, and met with officials from the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs, the National Centre for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, the National Centre for Disease Control and Public Health and other national stakeholders and international organizations involved in TB services.
The findings of the assessment will also inform the development of a roadmap to equip the Ministry of Labour, Health and Social Affairs and other relevant national partners with a framework for implementing systems-strengthening interventions to improve TB prevention and care. The development of such roadmaps is a key component of the TB Regional Eastern European and Central Asian Project (TB-REP).
Georgia is a priority country for WHO’s work on drug-resistant TB in the European Region. The WHO Global TB Report (2016) shows that the estimated incidence rate for multidrug-resistant and rifampicin-resistant TB in Georgia was 99 per 100 000 population in 2015, and mortality was 3.9 per 100 000.
In the last two decades the Government of Georgia has initiated several reforms in the health sector to move away from the highly centralized “Semashko” health care system structure of the former Soviet Union. The initial reform agenda included changes in health care financing – such as separation of health care financing and provision functions – and decentralization of the service provider network, granting providers autonomy, followed by privatization of the network.
More recently, the country has developed several strategic documents addressing TB prevention and care, in particular the National Strategic Plan for TB Control in Georgia 2016–2020, with the goal of reducing the burden of TB and its impact on overall social and economic development in the country by ensuring universal access to timely and high-quality diagnosis and treatment of all forms of TB.
