Over the past decade, Georgia has shown considerable progress in terms of economic development and poverty reduction on its way from a lower-middle to upper-middle income country. Despite positive indicators, challenges persist, such as an aging population. One of the major priorities of the Georgian Government is to ensure universal access to quality and effective health care services for the population. Although the public spending on health care has increased significantly over the years, the percentage of the gross domestic product (3.1% in 2022) is still considerably lower compared to countries in the European Union.
The National Healthcare Strategy establishes a roadmap for the development of the country's health care system until 2030 and defines the strategic directions required for its implementation. It should be commended that the country has made considerable progress in reducing the burden of communicable diseases. The launch of the Universal Health Care Programme in 2013 with improved communicable disease surveillance, immunization, and more effective disease prevention and control programmes contributed to a stable downward trend in the incidence rates of many communicable diseases. Despite the progress, pre-existing and newly emerging communicable diseases continue to pose challenges to the country's health care system. In addition, it remains particularly important to improve the emergency response capacity of primary health care facilities and hospitals. It should be noted that hospital beds are distributed unevenly across the country and more than 80% of the total number of beds are in private ownership. which could have implications on service delivery and compliance with national standards and regulations.