Dear Minister Sergeenko,

I trust all is well with you and the team in Georgia.

We have been approached by the publication Indigo Magazine, we wanted to check with you before we provide any answers to their questions. Are you familiar with this publication and have they contacted you or any of the other parties involved in you HEP C elimination programme. Please advise us if we are good to communicate with this publication and maybe we can share our answers with each other in order to be aligned.

Thank you and best wishes

Graeme

Hi Graeme,

Hope you are well! The below inquiry has made its way to me and I just wanted to get your thoughts – before responding, I would suggest we also send to the MOH in Tbilisi to see if they have received similar, and/or what their responses have been, to ensure we are aligned – would you be able to check in with them on that? I let the journalist know we’d be back in touch and asked her deadline.

Thanks,

Georgina

Begin forwarded message: 

 

From: Tsira Gvasalia [mailto:tsgvasalia@gmail.com]
Sent: 23 August 2017 11:38
To: Public Affairs; Tamar Babuadze
Subject: HepC Elimination Program in Georgia / Questions from Indigo Magazine

 

I’m contributing writer for the Indigo Magazine, a monthly outlet issued in Tbilisi and distributed throughout Georgia [Indigo Magazine]

 

Our October’s issue is dedicated to the Hepatitis C Elimination Program in Georgia. We have interviewed several involved parties for the story in Georgia, including patients, government representatives, NGOs. To show the balanced picture, we thought it would be inevitable to have Gilead’s answers to certain questions.  

 

We would be grateful to have your answers to these questions.  Th

 

1.      Could you name the representative(s) of the Georgian government who approached Gilead to initiate the National HepC Elimination Project and when was it?

2.      Which parties’ idea was it to set a 2020 elimination goal?

3.      We have seen the Reuters coverage of the press conference held in India, months prior to the Georgian program started - and there was a statement done by Gilead representative Gregg Alton that during the first phase, Georgia would be granted 5,000 pills of the free medications [supposedly Sofosbuvir]. How did the company come up with that amount of pills [5,000] - was it based on any kind of statistics/numbers/local infrastructure capacity provided by the Georgian side or was it the decision of the company to give only certain amount of pills in the beginning [considering the fact that during the first phase 27,595 patients were registered for treatment]?

 

4.                  As we know, Harvoni was provided to Georgian government not earlier than February 2016. By that time the drug was already approved by FDA for the American market. Why was it not provided to the Georgian government during the first phase - April 2015?

 

5.                  Is there any fixed amount of the medicines Gilead is going to provide overall to the Georgian government all through these five years of the Elimination period [2015-2020]?

 

6.                  How many Sofosbuvir and Harvoni have you provided to the Georgian government up to the given moment?

7.                  What are the top-three conditions GIlead wants the Government of Georgia to fulfill in return for the free drugs?

8.                  Is there any sort of evaluation mechanism functioning from your side, to observe the activities held during the elimination program? For instance, how would you evaluate the screening process in Georgia?

9.                  If the government of Georgia won’t be able to accomplish the HepC elimination by the target year of 2020, will Gilead still provide medicines after 2020?

10.              What will happen if any of the parties breach the conditions of the agreement - would it result in the termination of the agreement?

11.              How would you assess the elimination process in Georgia in the given moment? Would you call it so-far successful? If yes, would you provide with any criteria of the success measurement?

 

 

Thank you very much in advance for your answers. 

Sincerely yours,

Tsira Gvasalia & Tamar Babuadze

Indigo Magazine

 

 

--

Tsira Gvasalia 

+ 995 598 530 836

On the Move / ოთახები  

აი, ფაქტი - გარემოს დაცვა / iFact - Environment

 

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