Within the frames of Respiratory Diseases Awareness month, Petre Shotadze Tbilisi Medical Academy (TMA) organized an event dedicated to this topic. Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), who had participated in the study “Feasibility of Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) Program in Georgia” were invited to the event. They spoke about their disease and shared their experience of engaging in pulmonary rehabilitation with the students.

The above-mentioned study, which was conducted in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, was introduced to the students by Maka Maglakelidze, Head of the Institutional Culture Development Department of TMA. The students expressed the willingness to have similar meetings with patients with respiratory diseases in the future as well.

At the end of the event, the students made short presentations on the following topics: 1) lung cancer and other respiratory diseases from the prism of Planetary Health (they spoke about risk factors like: tobacco use, air pollution) 2) lung cancer, respiratory diseases and vaccination.

“It was a very informative event and it was especially interesting to hear the stories of the patients. I think it is very important to organize such events, it gives students great motivation to be more actively involved not only in education but also in extracurricular activities” - Rishu Shah, Medicine student.