Dear Ketevan, dear Mariam,

I hope this email finds you well and that you celebrated well the holiday on May 9^th. In France we celebrate the end of WWII on May 8^th.

As you know, we are organizing the next mission regarding mental health. Two experts, Alain Lefebvre (who Ketevan met on Friday at lunch) and Dr. Viviane Kovess Masfety, will arrive on Sunday May 19^th and will leave Tbilisi on Thursday  23^rd May. The objective of the mission is to further gather information about what is feasible in terms of epidemiological survey and overall strategy. Both experts are in CC and I encourage them to complete my mail if I am not concise enough.

As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Kovess-Masfety has an extensive knowledge of monitoring mental health policies (expert for the EU DG Health in setting indicators for the EU for exemple), strategy designing (France, Romania, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan) including mental healthcare financing and budgeting.  

The goal of this mission would be to i) make sure of what has been already done by whom and see how all the information can be gathered in the ministry ii) map, find and engage local partners and resources (focal points, survey/questionnaire companies/NGO), iii) define the methodology of the epidemiological survey (to be continued till September 2019 with a follow-up mission from Dr. Kovess).  

Therefore, I would like to ask you if it’s possible to organize meetings with you and some other stakeholders from Monday 20^th may to Wednesday 22^nd may.

On Monday, Alain and Viviane would like to meet with the AFD office first and then with all persons in the ministry involved on mental health issues and people working on data/information related to mental health and mental health institutions (especially if there are people dealing with statistics on mental health) in order to have an overview of the available data and what is done in the ministry. Could you arrange for such meeting? I think this would take a whole afternoon. We think it important to also invite the advisor on Mental Health to the Ministry to some of the meetings, Dr. Nino Makhashvili from Ilia State University and the Global Initiative on Psychiatry – Tbilisi, if you don’t see any problem with that.

On Tuesday, it would be nice to meet with a mental health institution and meet with the outpatient care specialist (and especially mobile team) and the person in charge of statistics/data management at the health institution. We have the contact details of Ekaterine Berdznishvili, Head of outpatient mental health services of Rustavi MH Center, Manana Eliashvili, the Director of Rustavi MH Center, so we could go to Rustavi. Maybe you have other suggestions of mental health institutions to visit.

On Wednesday, subsequent meetings can happen, and Alain and Viviane might meet with other NGOs and also companies/NGOs in charge of surveys. Viviane has been to Georgia in 2016 for a conference on psychiatry and had met with Dr Eka Chkonia, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Tbilisi State Medical University. Do you know her?  We will arrange a meeting to meet with her too.

I’ll be glad to discuss the program with you by phone if it’s more convenient for you.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,