On April 16-17, the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Law, Media and Health Initiative) and the Young Lawyers’ Association of Georgia held a training course in ‘Health Care and Human Rights’ in Kakheti.
Lawyers, judges of the Tbilisi Appeal Court and City Court and prosecutors from the Public Prosecutor’s Offices from various districts of Tbilisi attended the training course.
Among the topics addressed by the course were: health care related legislation and international conventions; the health care policy and system; basic rights of patients and health care providers; legal and ethical issues relating to the regulation of health care professionals. The training was run by Mamuka Jibuti, the HIV/AIDs Prevention Project Director in Georgia, Irakli Sasania, a health care expert and Givi Javashvili, the chairman of the National Bioethics Council of Georgia.
One of the key objectives of the training course was the promotion of the practical handbook ‘Human Rights in Health Care’, which was published by the OSGF in 2011, and introduction of the issues addressed by the book to the lawyers.
“The knowledge obtained through the training course was rather important to me as a judge. During the period I had an opportunity to learn more details about health care and human rights issues and get familiar with the ways of their application to practice. The course showed clearly to me the organization of the health care system and tools available for the protection of human rights in the system. Such training courses should be held often because judges have quite general information about this field and the protection of human rights in health care is rather important”, said Lasha Kalandadze, a judge of the Tbilisi Appeal Court.