Nino Tatoshvili, criminal defence lawyer in Georgia
Medical & reproductive criminal law

Failure to Provide Urgent Medical Assistance

Failure to provide urgent medical assistance: assess the person’s medical duty, immediacy of danger, available intervention, causation and clinical records.

English legal guideTbilisi · Georgia-wide
Short answer

Georgian criminal law specifically addresses unjustified failure by a medical worker to provide urgent assistance to a patient whose life is endangered, with more serious consequences where grave harm or death follows.

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Clinical and criminal analysis

Start with duty, record and medical causation

An unfortunate delay is not automatically criminal; ability, duty, urgency, knowledge and causation must be established.

Clinical-legal question

Who received the request, what condition was apparent, what assistance was possible and what did delay change?

Independent expertise should identify the applicable specialty standard and limitations; it should not be asked to declare criminal guilt.

The unaltered clinical record matters first

Emergency calls, dispatch logs, triage notes, staffing, travel times, handovers, observations and causation opinion.

01

Clinical chronology

Reconstruct condition, decisions, interventions and response.

02

Individual duty

Distinguish practitioner, clinic, agency and executive roles.

03

Causation

Test competing medical explanations and legally assessed harm.

Criminal Code articles to check

Articles that may enter the qualification

Article 130

Leaving a sick person in danger

May apply to unjustified failure by a medical worker to provide urgent aid where a patient's life is endangered; duty, urgency, valid reason and consequence require proof.

Read full Article 130 text on this page
Relevant Criminal Code wording

Read the relevant Criminal Code provisions

The panel below reproduces the available official English wording for convenient reading. Check the current Georgian text and the exact article part before relying on it, because later amendments may not yet appear in translation.

Article 130Leaving a sick person in danger

1. Failure of a medical worker to provide urgent medical aid, without a valid reason, to a sick person whose life is endangered, –

shall be punished by a fine or corrective labour for a term of up to 15 months, with or without the deprivation of the right to hold an office or to carry out activities for a term of up to three years, or by house arrest for a term of six months to one year.

2. The same act which has resulted in a serious damage to health or death of a sick person, –

shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of three to five years, with the deprivation of the right to hold an office or to carry out activities for up to three years, or by house arrest for a term of one to two years.

The consolidated official source is listed in the source section at the end of this guide.

First controlled step

Secure time-stamped operational records before systems overwrite them.

Sources & legislation

Primary sources for this guide

Before acting, compare this guide with the current Georgian text and the exact document served in the case. The official English translation may not include the latest amendment.

Official consolidated Criminal Code — current text & PDFLaw on Health CareLaw on Patient Rights
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Use the urgent route for detention, searches, questioning or time-critical international matters. Standard and corporate enquiries can be scheduled separately.

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