The Chair of the Health Care and Social Issues Committee, Dimitri Khundadze held a briefing regarding the recent reports made around the hepatitis C elimination program.

"Purposive attacks have recently become frequent on the hepatitis C elimination program. Let me tell you that to discredit the good is to bring grist to the mill of evil! The authors of the Universal Imprisonment Program disapprove the creators of the Universal Health Care Program eliminating hepatitis C and thusly, attack the good. This is not a coincidence, since they strive to devalue an unprecedented project in the world - to harm the government, to cast a shadow over the Georgian Dream. They do not shy away from discrediting this important accomplishment. As you know Georgia is the only country in the world where hepatitis C elimination project is being implemented on this scale.
The past was hard, they had to remove 3 corpses every 5 days from prison and they were asking for two more. People were to sell their property to pay for the treatment. Nowadays, clinics are full of patients and their health care budget is tripled. Despite the flaws in the system, today people no longer die on the streets due to impecuniosity.

About 65,000 people have benefited from the hepatitis C elimination program that has brought Georgia to the world's attention. 58,000 of them have already completed treatment and more than 98% have been cured. The program is being rejected by those officials of the previous government who held up to 25,000 inmates in prisons, almost half of whom were infected with the hepatitis C virus putting them to the risk of death.

This situation was even brought before the European Court where they found 5 cases of violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on inadequate treatment and systemic violations, which was detrimental not only to the health of patients but also to the face of the state. After the Georgian Dream came to power, the hepatitis C program began from the penitentiary system and then expanded beyond.
Consequently, on 12 November 2014, at the 1211th meeting, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe haled the measures assumed by Georgia after 2012.

The screening program in Georgia, which has recently expanded to more than 1,200 locations across the country, is recognized by the World Health Organization yet discredited by Chiaberashvili who makes obscure calculations, forgets about the past, and tries to turn reality upside down. He underestimated 65,000 recovered patients and accused us of treating sparingly 2000 allegedly untreated patients. It is as if we have refused treatment to these 2000 patients. He does not know or does not wish so, that it is impossible to accurately predict the drug supply and the estimated surplus may vary between within 3-5% which is totally permissible.

This is not a crime. Let the medication be supernumerary for patients than on contrary. This is not a selling off program, it serves to heal the patient. Speculations on the alleged financial barrier due to the low patient activity is not true, since even after the problem was completely eliminated, the pace of patient involvement did not increase dramatically. Sadly enough, people tend to give credits to other priorities than taking care of their own health.

However, the preachy statements of people who, in their time, held the appropriate office and leverage to do the job, but did nothing for this country and its health care system yet do everything to return to power, is obviously unfortunate and inadmissible at the same time", - D. Khundadze stated.