The visit of the un United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health to Armenia

Dainius Puras, The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to health had a working visit to Armenia within the period of September 25 to October 5 of 2017.

The visit was aimed at the detection of what measures were taken by the Republic of Armenia to ensure the right to health, including also the achievements and challenges in this regard.

At the end of the visit, Dainius Puras presented his initial observations on the healthcare system of Armenia. Ha particularly mentioned the serious challenges regarding the HR, the low motivation of the healthcare workers, low salaries, low professional associations, the low level of state budget allocated for healthcare sector, the high level of pocket payments, the current problems regarding the accessibility and availability of care sector.

During his speech, Dainius Puras touched upon the people with mental health and disability problems. As noticed by Puras, Armenia is enabled to develop such a mental health system, which will be based on modern principals and criteria of human rights and public healthcare. As mentioned by the latter, criteria of modern approach on mental healthcare should be established, which will contribute to the improvement of mental healthcare in schools and educational environment.

The Special Rapporteur also presented the works directed towards the fight against, appraising the fact that Armenia is among the four countries, where mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS was eliminated.

He provided observations on the access to medical research and treatment for people with tuberculosis, as well as on drug policy and the accessibility of controlled medicine.

Dainius Puras stated that, legislative and practical reforms should be implemented to improve the healthcare system to ensure the human rights promotion under the international law, as well as the implementation of the commitments undertaken at the healthcare protection. It should be mentioned that within the visit, Dainius Puras had meetings with the RA Government officials, National Assembly Deputies, Human Rights Defender, representatives of judiciary, officials and employees of healthcare system, as well as with the international organization, civil society organization representatives, and diplomats.

Araks Melkonyan, legal expert of the “Protection of Right without Borders” NGO also participated in the meeting with Puras and presented a number of problems regarding the exercise of the right to healthcare, particularly in the sphere of the protection of the rights of the people with mental health problems, detected within the activities of the Organization.

Dainius Puras visited a number of healthcare institutions, National Center for AIDS prevention, Drug Center, National Tuberculosis Center, penitentiary institutions, a number of schools, including also inclusive educational institutions.

Within the visit, the comprehensive report elaborated on the state of health law in Armenia will be presented at the UN Human Rights Council session to be held in June of 2018

The full observations are available with the following link

http://un.am/up/file/SR-health_Armenia_EMS-ARM%20(final).pdf