Grim reality… Let’s help the RA President
A resident of Stepanavan, Lori region, Armine Kirakosyan has been applying to 168 Zham several days in a row asking for help to his family, specifically her husband.
The problem is that Kirakosyan’s family, having been in hardship, can’t even afford to travel to Yerevan to talk about the issues. That is the reason why they are calling on the phone. “My husband, Edgar, is 33 years old. He is in a severe health condition and it gets worse every day. We don’t know who to address and who to ask help from,” told us Armine on the phone assuring that although her husband had a good health but it drastically deteriorated during the years he had been drafted to army. After being drafter to army in 1997 to Horadiz, in exactly one year Edgar started to experience excessive pain in the kidneys.
Then he was hospitalized to Muratsan clinic. “After receiving medical treatment in the hospital he was again sent to Horadiz without warning him that his disease may be repetitive. He was even not told that he has such a serious medical situation. He served about a year with that disease and he periodically had cramps. I have only recently seen the medical history of my husband. If we had been aware of how the serious the disease was we might have been able to deter it,” assured us Armine. After being sent home Edgar worked in the clinic of Stepanavan as a driver and at the workplace his health situation was so deteriorated that he was moved to hospital. That’s when he found out about his serious medical problems.
“Everything became clear in the hospital of Vanadzor and even the specialists told us that he shouldn’t have been allowed to continue his service. So he should have been discharged from military duty and Edgar was supposed to receive serious medical treatment. To be honest, during all these years, he has been working very hard and he had serious blood pressure changes, nausea. But he never had thought that he would have such a serous kidney problem,” tells Armine and assures that her husband is in a very bad health plight because he receives dialysis several times a week.
Of course, this disease cannot be cured and through dialysis they are trying to prolong his life. Armine says that the husband gets worse day by day and his other organs are being destroyed. The doctors of Vanadzor clinic only recommend transplants of kidneys for Edgar. For that purpose he needs to go abroad. “Indeed, he won’t live very long with dialysis. They could have conducted this surgery in Armenia as well but if the donor is one of the blood relatives of the patient.
The laws of our country prohibit the replacement of a kidney with an unrelated person’s kidney. We have been tested and turns out none of us matches. Our bloods don’t match,” says Armine and says that after his disease no one works in her family and that they couldn’t afford surgery abroad.
Edgar and Armine have a four-year-old daughter and the whole family lives only with a 21,000-dram subsidy and with Edgar’s 18,000-dram disability incentive. “Of course the medical treatment is free of charge but we often get to pay for medications. We cannot take care even of our elementary needs.
He has been a very hard working guy but now he is merely fading. I cannot go work by leaving him without care. I am asking you to move my husband to some foreign country. He is really young and can live but it depends on funds. The doctors recommend us to immediately move abroad because the Armenian dialysis is a bad quality here and it harms the other organs as well. His life can be saved abroad. In Germany his life can be saved. We can’t afford that but thousands of other continue living after such a surgery,” told us Armine on the phone.
During his last press conference the RA president asked the journalists to help him to overcome the “grim” situation in the country. Our newspaper daily received dozens of such requests and complaints. Hundreds of people – men, women, children ask for help to receive surgical treatment.
We deal with this matter ever day. People wish to get rid of their diseases but that requires a lot of funding and medical treatment abroad. Of course, this matter wouldn’t be adverted to so much if our healthcare system was able to handle the surgery of these patients abroad. So we receive all kinds of sad stories like this and try to deliver them to the president’s administration and all the other relevant state bodies. Many people live and many others bid farewell to their lives because of not being able to pay for their health.
By Lusine Stepanyan
