With aim to improve health services in prisons and address the shortcomings identified by the Committee for Prevention of Torture (CPT), the authorities in North Macedonia, supported by a CoE consultant, discussed the first draft of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) on the provision of efficient healthcare in prisons during a working group (WG) meeting that took place in Skopje on 15-16 December 2021.

The WG members, namely doctors working in the prisons Idrizovo, Shtip, Skopje and Tetovo, representatives from the Ministry of Health, as well as representatives from the Directorate for the Execution of Sanctions, contributed to designing the SOP by sharing their experiences and practical knowledge. The SOP, which sets unified procedures to be applied in all prisons in North Macedonia, further specifies the actions to be undertaken during the different phases of healthcare provision, beginning with admission, regular screenings, registering indicators of ill-treatment and handling medications, ending with the prisoner’s final check prior to release. The document has been drafted in line with the CoE standards and best practices.

It is expected this SOP to be finalised and piloted in up to two prisons in 2022, in order to evaluate its applicability within the country’s prison context.

This activity was organised under the Action “Enhancing the capacities of the penitentiary system and the external oversight mechanism in North Macedonia”, co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe within the “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022" and implemented by the Council of Europe.