Gov’t Offers Free Medicines to Socially Vulnerable with Chronic Diseases

From July 1, the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs launched a program which offers free medicines to around 200,000 socially vulnerable people who suffer from concrete chronic diseases: Cardiovascular diseases, lung chronic diseases, thyroid diseases and type II diabetes (non insulin-dependent).

Only socially vulnerable individuals who have no more than 100,000 points in the Database of Socially Vulnerable are eligible to benefit from the program.

The Ministry of Health reports that socially vulnerable individuals will have to pay a symbolic fee, maximum 1 GEL, for the necessary medicaments which can be bought at the pharmacies of the tender-winning PSP.

To kick off the campaign, five branches of PSP will serve the target group of individuals, with that number to increase with time.

At the first stage, socially vulnerable persons will be able to get 13 kinds of international standard medicine.

Zaza Sopromadze, Deputy Health Minister and Director of the Social Service Agency, personally met the pharmacy employees and beneficiaries.

He explained that in order to benefit from the project, socially vulnerable people should have a prescription from their family doctor, and then should register at the Department, after which they will receive the necessary medicines for a symbolic price.

“This project is one of the most important. The four categories of diseases were chosen based on statistics which say that 60-70 percent of people in Georgia have these diseases,” Sopromadze stated.

Georgia’s Ministry of Health activated new criteria in the state-led Universal Healthcare Program from March 2017, part of which envisaged renewing the database of the program, which had not been updated since 2013, ensuring that only uninsured people can benefit from the Healthcare Program and perfected healthcare packages, and introducing selective contracting, which means that the Ministry will co-operate only with high-standard hospitals and clinics which meet certain criteria.

Thea Morrison