Dear Sopo,

 

Thank you for the detailed feed-back.

 

Please, be informed that my last day in the office this week is Thursday, as I am starting new duty travel.

On Thursday I am only available until 15.30.

 

I hope to meet the minister tomorrow or Thursday by mid-afternoon as indicated. Hopefully he is available. I can also come late tomorrow or very early on Thursday, if this would anyhow suit the minister.

 

I will do my best to see, what we can do regarding Mariana. The case is that we very much avoid any contracts with any staff from the ministry. Very exceptionally we do it, but we cannot provide the salary for the staff, but when absolutely indicated we try to provide fair compensation for the work that goes beyond “normal” cooperation with the ministry. The APW with Mariana is in the grey zone already, but let me think again, what we can do.

 

Best regards,

 

 

 

Dear Marijan,

 

I am sending you our comments on above mentioned topics

 

Budget for BCA:

·         TB action plan - Global Fund supports this activity, therefore, given the funding limitations money need to be spending more strategically and wisely and allocate this funding to other underfunded areas of country interest and priority. 

·         Tobacco control - is a priority, but given other funding sources (FCTC, etc) would be good to know what are the funding gaps in other sources and identify areas on which AC funds will be spend on.

·         Reproductive Health& Child - the BCA formulation for this area is Support Georgia at Implementation the National Maternal and Newborn Health and Reproductive Health Strategy and 3 -Year Action Plan (2017-2019). HBSC is not part of the Government approved 3-Year National Action Plan, and should be supported from other sources and not from this line item. There are number of areas for which funding and technical assistance gaps exist in the Action Plan that must be supported by the BCA.

·         Environment- I am not sure what this limited funding can contribute, and would advise to re-allocate this funding to other underfunded areas, especially, given that there is twinning project with support of the EU that NCDC will be starting implementation in this biennium. 

·         PHC- integrated care -technical assistance in this area need to be thought out very well, given that funding doesn’t correspond the needs.

 

I will send you the priority areas in emergency preparedness by the next week.

 

GMP:

The minister would like to arrange meeting with you on 2^nd of February at 12:00, to discuss issues on GMP. We ask you to reserve places for us on GMP training which will start in June, 2018. The rest will be discussed during the meeting. 

 

UHC Partnership

 

I looked through the Terms of Reference for 2018; I think the work load is much more than 60 days according to our action plan (Missions plus work that should be done between experts visit). Could you be so kind and revise the amount of the days for Terms and Reference for Mariana. 

 

Waiting for you suggestions.

 

 

 

 

Dear Sopo,

 

As discussed yesterday, please, find enclosed short summary of the planned, envisaged and available budget for the BCA.

There are different sources of money, that we can use. AC funds are funds that are flexible and that we have got and can start using them.

VD – voluntary donation funds will most probably become available soon, but they are not flexible and can only be used within the defined technical area.

WHE funds are funds that we expect for the area of emergency preparedness. At the moment I have no idea how much money we will get in reality and when, but I have positive expectations.

Hopefully some of the work will also be funded directly by the regional office, geographically dispersed offices and headquarters.

 

As you can see from the attached simplified financial summary of our internal workplan, we are short in funds in selected technical areas.

This is why we (WHO) often complain at the meetings of the governing bodies, that money comes to the organization but it can not be used in a way we would like to distribute/use it. For sure there is shortage of money in the area of non-communicable diseases and health system. This is across the organization and not only in Georgian workplan.

 

Attached is also very provisional list of missions. As we did not have funds so far, we were also not able to start planning missions in detail. This will change in the next 2-4 weeks substantially.

 

We also envisage to have much better picture on the work to be done by mid-February. We know pretty well what we are (doing and) going to do in the area of tobacco control and in the area of UHC in the first quarter of this year and later on, but for most of the areas we are still having discussions with our technical units to define more details. We will soon send you the mission report on SSA organizational capacity / strengthening. Earlier this week I have sent you a report on pharmaceuticals / GMP.

The action plan for UHC for 2018 is being finalized these days.

 

We shall meet on a regular base, so we (WHO) can continuously inform you about the envisaged activities and get your overall agreement and commitment. Operational work will mostly be done in close collaboration with designated technical focal points and national experts.

 

Other issues agreed during the meeting will be addressed as soon as possible.

 

Thank you once again for great collaboration.

 

Best regards,

 

Marijan Ivanusa

WHO Representative

Head of WHO Country Office Georgia

 

Office location: 81 Vasil Barnov Street, 0179 Tbilisi, Georgia

Mailing address: UN House, 9 Rapiel Eristavi Street, 0179 Tbilisi, Georgia

Mobile 1: +995 599 305 207

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Email: ivanusam@who.int

Skype: who-ivanusam

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