On June 28-30, as part of the Law, Media and Health Project the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF) held a training course for journalists – “Human Rights and Healthcare”.
Around 20 journalists from different media outlets took part in the training course. Along with other issues all of them work on health, human rights and social issues. Hosts of popular TV talk shows Politmetri and Ghia Eteri (Open Air) were also among training participants.
The training topics were selected through an online survey.
The 2-day training course gave trainees an opportunity to improve their knowledge on the issues like medical insurance and health care quality, access to healthcare, HIV/AIDs pandemic development stages and stigma and discrimination associated with it, prevalence of viral hepatitis in Georgia and in the world; clinical progression and outcome; modern vaccination and treatment capabilities; access to treatment and human rights; routes of disease transmission and prevention; drug addiction and human rights etc.
“I would like to thank you for this 2-day rather interesting and useful workshop. I have learned about the details – on health care and human rights and insurance – that are not addressed by concrete persons in their interviews, therefore I could not have heard and learned about. I will not have this problem after the training course, as I already have this information. Both professionally and personally it was important to obtained information about HIV/AIDs and hepatitis. I would be interested further to get information about social issues and the role of a social worker”, said Gigla Tumanishvili, a journalists of Rustavi 2 TV channel.
“In the first place I would like to note that the training course was really very interesting. I think that several factors have lead to this result, in particular, excellent choice of topics, qualified lecturers, right management of time and materials, a good team of participants and environment. It would be good to get more information about the practices and experience of other countries”, said Sopho Zurabiani, the director of Moambe (the Messenger) at GPB.
The training course was run by Giorgi Gotsadze, the Curatio International Foundation Director, and Maia Butsashvili, a healthcare expert and communicable disease specialist.