A delegation from North Macedonia, consisting of prison doctors, senior officials of the Ministry of Health, the Head and representatives of the Directorate for the Execution of Sanctions (DES), benefitted from a study visit to Madrid, carried out from 31 May to 2 June 2022. The visit successfully facilitated exchange of experiences, good practices and lessons learnt on healthcare provision in prisons.

During the visit, the delegation had fruitful meetings with the representatives of the Spanish General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions and visited two prisons near Madrid, resulting with better understanding of the transfer of healthcare protection to the community services, the current mental health programmes, telemedicine, as well as inter-institutional coordination. The representatives of the Spanish prison administration shared the know-how and challenges related to the transfer of the provision of healthcare in prisons to the Ministry of Health.

It is expected from this study visit to contribute towards further enhancement of the cooperation between the Ministries of Justice and Health in North Macedonia, applying the Spanish experience. The gained experience could help the authorities in North Macedonia to better plan and use available resources, improve training provision and increase employability rates of medical staff in future.

This activity was organised under the action on “Enhancing the capacities of the penitentiary system and the External Oversight Mechanism in North Macedonia”, which is a part of the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022".