The state funded the Universal Healthcare Program with 7 billion GEL in 10 years, - Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili said at the event dedicated to the 10-year anniversary of the state program for universal healthcare.
"It is a great honor for me to appear before you today. I will try to summarize very briefly the results of the 10 years of the universal health program. Before that, I would like to remind our society of the situation we faced when we came to power in 2012, and I would like to give you some comparative examples.
You remember well that in 2012 the health budget was very meager, almost 70 million GEL was spent on financing universal health programs. It was, of course, very underfunded. This made it impossible to cover our community and generally fund the needs that our citizens critically needed. Therefore, in 2012, when Georgian Dream came to power, former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of our party, came up with an initiative and with his decision we started financing the universal health care program. Today we have a radically changed situation. During 10 years, the state financed the programs with 7 billion GEL. In doing so, we have actually made radical, transformative changes in this sector. For comparison, I would like to tell you that if earlier only 40% of the population had access to medical care, today this figure has increased to 94%. 94% of our population benefits from the universal healthcare program, which, of course, is a great result," the head of government said.
