The Armenian Government Lets Very Ill Citizens Die
While the Armenian inner political atmosphere has suffered some changes in recent months due to the struggle of power, the Armenian health system still remains with its drawbacks and big questions in spite of doctors’ qualifications abroad that coming back to Armenia do not change a lot in terms of ill patient-doctor-payment relationship.
This time I will be very brief with my mothers’ story, even if it is painful for me to publish it (about which I was thinking whether to publish or not), since I am willing to make some deeper investigation in the health system especially in my country, by presenting all the necessary documents and proofs related to the health system’s so-called rules with more valuable information that will be useful for other people, simple citizens, and they won’t go through which we went through. This is an obligation not as a daughter who wants to save her mother’s life, but also as journalist who has the obligation to present the real image of the issue (with its positive and negative sides) to the public and restrain, remind the majority of doctors and the system leaders to be more careful not to play games with people’s life like with rats in laboratories, by turning them into a money-maker machine.
The story began when my mother was diagnosed with cancer after torturing months research, high-cost analyses and consultation/s that costs 10,000 drams per visit (the cheapest examination starts from 10,000 drams). First, the doctors, included the family doctor of the “Muratsan” University Polyclinic, could not realize what problem she could have, they advised her to heal her nerves, kidney, column and many other parts of the body except from sending her to the right diagnosing place: gynecology, and to have a very attentive examination of the women reproductive organs, from which many women in whole over the word are suffering and from which many types of cancer can occur, even from a simple, unnoticeable dot (such as polyps, moles, being both malign and benign leading to cancer cells and, in case of lack of treatment, to death). Finally, when we spent lots of money (at least 1,000,000 drams) on only different researches, analyses in different clinics of the Republic of Armenia (since she has been advised such), she was told about the real problem based on the punctured abdomen liquid.
Since the whole story has also many details and months process and difficult steps, I would add only that after a prolonged period of her health state, in which cancer cells can only grow and give metastases like in case of many patients, we were advised by a doctor, the Head of Department the B. Fanarjian Center of Rentgenology and Oncology in Yerevan, to do laparoscopy, a close operation of abdomen to find out whether those cancer cells exist or not, and if yes, what kind of cells are they in order to get the right treatment strategy (which is based mainly on chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery). However, during the laparoscopy – an operation performed in the abdomen or pelvis through small incisions (0.5–1.5 cm) with the aid of a camera, – I was called and informed in the same centre that the doctors had decided to make an open surgery to my mother by giving her only 1-2% of chance of survival (I would like to remind that my mother and I went there for the diagnostic laparoscopy, and not for a difficult and expensive surgery, at least for the beginning).
After an extremely struggling and sleepless nights in the hospital and reanimation, now I barely try to keep her alive, and still fighting for her rights to receive legally available medications, at least painkillers (that also cost a lot for the middle class citizen), that her doctors do not provide, sending me from a building/hospital to another even in case of all the necessary documents and rights as an Armenian citizen, and which is the most important is that they refuse to take care of my mother medically after the difficult operation as a result of which she became so ill.
Thus, I am still investigating this case and waiting for a response from the Health Minister of RA, especially in the sake of my mother’s life, as well as to provide significant information to Armenian citizens for their rights, since each of us, no matter what age, education and financial situation, must be secured by its government at least by the health policy and system.
By Elena Chobanyan
Investigative journalist, TV presenter, author,
MA in International Relations
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