The Committee convened a meeting in camera to discuss the health and social situation of the population living in the occupied territories of Georgia.

The participants of the meeting, including the members of the Interim Commission on Territorial Integrity and De-Occupation, heard Ruslan Abashidze, Chairman of the Government of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, and Ketevan Bakaradze, Minister of Health and Social Affairs of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia.

As the Chair of the Committee, Dimitri Khundadze, stated, the state spares no efforts to take care of the health and social services of its citizens, and this becomes even more important when it comes to the residents of the occupied territories of Georgia.

"Providing public health services to the people living in the occupied territories is one of the best ways to resolve the conflict, because I think the best language of communication is to take care of each other's health. There are often cases when our citizens from the occupied territories move to the state-controlled territory to receive medical services and the satisfaction index in this regard is quite high. However, there are some problematic issues, including with the crossing of the occupation line, as well as the lack of information about the existence of these services. It is obvious that the provision of information should be improved so that the citizens living there become aware of these benefits and, if necessary, receive appropriate medical care”, - D. Khundadze stated.

As the Chairman of the Committee noted, at the same time, all programs need some adjustments, supervision, and this is what the participants of the meeting discussed. According to him, certain issues need to be improved in terms of social services.

"We talked about these issues. There, on the ground, particularly in Gali, certain sectors of medical institutions operate, mainly in the field of primary health care services, where medical services are funded programmatically from the budget. However, there are types of medical services that cannot be provided on the ground and for this the citizens move to the area controlled by the central government. Of course, the management of this budget also needs some financial oversight and we plan to make this system more efficient and effective. Most importantly, it will be one of the most important contributions to restore relations and, of course, finally resolve territorial integrity and make the state governance full-fledged”, - D. Khundadze specified.