Dear Sopo,

As a follow-up to our meeting with Minister Sergeenko  on 19 March, I would like just to share some thoughts regarding a potential joint activity dedicated to World Health Day, 2019 which is dedicated to Universal Health Coverage, with emphasis also on Primary Health Care.

Rusiko was already in contact with the Ministry on this and I am very thankful to her, as I am just for the second day in the office and have many urgent issues to address.

We can keep to the original plan and make media  statements during the last day of the WHO mission on strategic purchasing. And I remember minister’s request to promote the single-purchaser mechanism – we can do this.

However, if this is not feasible or not appropriate for the moment, we could alternatively make a joint press release. We have a  ready template prepared by WHO Europe (attached) and we could  easily adjust it to Georgia, adding also some statements of the Minister, Deputy-minister and myself.  The template puts a lot of emphasis on PHC, but we can also emphasize the importance of single-purchaser mechanism under the paragraph related to Out-of-pocket payments.

The joint press-release could be circulated in social media and we have also some ready-to-use social media tiles dedicated to WHD (I attach only one sample as they are big in volume).

Finally, we could also manage to print some posters dedicated specifically to WHD 2019 and use them either during the media statements or other events related to UHC and PHC.

We will be in the Ministry tomorrow, at 14:00 with the mission on strategic purchasing and could further discuss this.

Thank you and best regards,

Silviu

Dr Silviu Domente

WHO Representative and Head of WHO Country Office

WHO Country Office, Georgia

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION | Regional Office for Europe

81 Vasili Barnov Street, 0179 Tbilisi, georgia

tel: +995 32 299 80 73 | mob: +995 599 47 54 85 | skype:  silviudomente