Gori Military Hospital
The Military Hospital of the Ministry of Defense of Georgia, also known as the Gori Military Hospital, is a medical facility operated by the Ministry of Defense of Georgia and located in the city of Gori. In its current form, the center was established on 15 August 2006, succeeding the Soviet-era military hospital based in Georgia's capital of Tbilisi.
The hospital is a 176-bed facility, providing general medical and surgical care as well as a 24-hour emergency service for military personnel as well as for civilians. About 25% of the patients being treated at the hospital at any one time are civilians. It also functions as a teaching hospital for the Tbilisi State Medical University.
The ability of the hospital to respond to mass casualty events was put to test during the August 2008 war with Russia. Beyond the Georgian military personnel, most of the civilians injured in or around Gori were initially taken to the Gori hospital for treatment. On 13 August 2008, at around 2:00 a.m. local time, a rocket fired from a Russian military helicopter hit a group of medical staff members in the hospital yard, killing an emergency room physician, Giorgi Abramishvili, who had spent the
previous four days operating on people wounded during the hostilities. The Human Rights Watch concluded that attack on the hospital, which was "clearly marked with a red cross", was a "serious violation of international humanitarian law". The hospital was named after Abramishvili in August 2013.
