ment and Rehabilitation Center. According to the response received from the medical department, to this date, 80 accused individuals/convicts suffering from tuberculosis are placed and undergoing the treatment for tuberculosis in the penitentiary system. Among them, the majority of the prisoners (73 accused/convicts) are placed in the Tuberculosis Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre N19. The rest of the patients, due to the security reasons, are placed in different establishments, where the conditions for their treatment are created and the anti-tuberculosis treatment of the diseased accused individuals/convicts is carried out in accordance with the State programme guidelines under the supervision of the doctor specialists of the relevant field. Therefore, the above recommendation was not fulfilled. Order №01-5/N of the Minister of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia dated 31 January 2014 on “ Approving the Programme on Prevention, Detection and Treatment of Hepatitis C in Prisons and other Detention Institutions“ regulates the issues related to the treatment of the convicts with interferon. According to the information obtained from the Ministry of Corrections, in 2015, 5500 prisoners were subjected to the hepatitis examinations (in 2014 – 8711). 308 convicts received the treatment throughout the year. The Public Defender, in his Parliamentary Report of 2014 issued a recommendation to amend the Order №01-5/N of the Minister of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia dated 31 January 2014 on “ Approving the Programme on Prevention, Detection and Treatment of Hepatitis C in Prisons and other Detention Institutions“ in order to ensure every accused/convict with the anti-viral treatment in case of medical indication demonstrating the need for treatment. Unfortunately, the above recommendation was not fulfilled, since the accused individuals still have no access to the anti-viral treatment. It is noteworthy that the foreign citizens and stateless prisoners placed in the penitentiary establishments do not have access to the Hepatitis C treatment with Sofosbuvir, which is ensured in the framework of the State Programme on Providing Measures for the Management of Fist Stage of Hepatitis C. According to Article 2 of the Decree N169 of the Government of Georgia of 20 April 2015, beneficiaries of the Hepatitis C management programme are the individuals holding citizenship document of Georgia. On 9 December 2015, the Public Defender addressed the Government of Georgia with the recommendation N13-2/1446 to establish the discrimination fact based on citizenship and the degrading treatment in the semi-open and closed establishment N17 of the penitentiary department. It is important that the foreign nationals and stateless persons placed in the penitentiary system should have access to the Hepatitis C treatment by Sofosbuvir like the persons holding the Georgian citizenship. NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM (NPM), 2015 125