L. Militonyan

On October 23 of 2013, “Protection of Rights without Border” NGO submitted a suit to the Administrative Court against the Medical-Social Expertise Agency under the RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and against the Ministry of Finance, as a third party, on the demand to completely eliminate the decision on not recognizing L. M. as disabled.

M. received a severe injury on the brain which caused the child serious health issues having influence on her activities. During 2003-2011, the child was subjected to different medical examination, due to which the child got the “disabled child” status for two years.

By the outcomes of the new medical and social expertise, L. M. was not recognized as disabled according to the decision made by the Medical-Social Expertise Commission on July 13 of 2013. In the outcomes of the reexamination, Medical-Social Expertise Agency confirmed that the child was recognized as completely healthy and in that regard a decision was made not to give the child the disability category.

After four years of forensic procedures and two medical examinations, the Administrative Court made a decision to satisfy the claim and annul the decisions made by the Medical-Social Expertise Commission and the Agency.

It should be mentioned, that there are many cases when people with serious health traits are rejected to be given the disability category.

Moreover, corruption scheme was created and operated at the Medical-Social Expertise Agency for a long time, through which officials received bribes and transferred the latter to their superiors, after which a disability category was provided.

The arrests of the of the head of Medical-Social Expertise Agency A. S. and the head of the reexamination department of the same agency A. P. on the grounds of suspicion of taking bribe on December, 2016 prove the above mentioned. Moreover, the members of the territorial medical-social expertise agencies who were officially authorized to conduct the respective examinations as prescribed in law took money from the citizens for determining their disability category.