Meeting of the Commission for Studying Current Issues of Medicine in Georgia
- November 1, 2021
On 28 October, 2021, a regular meeting of the “Commission for the Studying Current Issues of Medicine in Georgia” was held at the Presidium of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences to discuss the problems related to COVID-19 anti-vaccination campaign in Georgia. The first speaker, TSU Professor, Head of the Institute for Social Studies and Analysis Iago Kachkachishvili presented the results of a joint survey conducted by the World Health Organization, the EU Delegation to Georgia and the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs in 2020-2021, which analyzes the population’s attitude to vaccination. Based on the obtained results and their analysis, five groups of the population were identified as having different attitudes towards the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination. The speaker described each of these groups in detail and offered specific recommendations for dealing with them. The second speaker, Akaki Zoidze, associate professor at the Ilia State University, an expert at the Curatio International Foundation, gave a brief overview of more than 200-year history of the anti-vaccine movement in the world. He analyzed the main driving factors, goals, objectives, and ways to combat this phenomenon. At the end of the report, Mr. Akaki presented specific recommendations for state institutions on how to to tackle the anti-vaccination campaign and its active representatives in Georgia.
