A Criminal Case was Instituted on the Ground of the Failure to Provide Proper COVID-19 Medical Care

On September 18 of 2020, A. H., the legal successor of F.H., filed a crime report to the Republic of Armenia Prosecutor General’s Office on the failure to provide proper COVID-19 related medical treatment.

The lack of providing proper medical care led, particularly, to the drastic deterioration of F.H. health condition, as a result of which, the latter died on July 04 of 2020.

            In this regard, the Prosecutor’s Office of Erebuni and Nubarashen Administrative Districts adopted a decision on the elaboration of the respective documents and its further procedures.

            Based on the documents elaborated by the Erebuni Subdivision of Yerevan Police Department, a criminal case on the ground of Paragraph 2 of Article 130 of the RA Criminal Code was instituted.

The interests of A. H. are presented by the lawyers of the Protection of Rights without Borders NGO.

The necessity of the protection of the right to life was constantly raised during the prevention process of COVID-19 in the Republic of Armenia, in regard to which the instituted criminal case is considered of precedent nature.

F. H. noticed his first coronavirus related complaints and symptoms on June 16 of 2020, after which an immediate contact was made both to the emergency and polyclinic, as well as to a number of other medical centres.

The attempts to provide emergency medical treatment to F. H. and take him to hospital were in vain.

On June 18 of 2020, F. H. was taken to a private hospital, wherein the outcomes of the examination, F. H. was diagnosed with 7-10 days bilateral pneumonia.

Conditioned by a number of restrictions adopted by the state in terms of COVID-19, the medical treatment of F. H. was not possible to organize in a private hospital.

Only in the evening of June 19 of 2020, it was possible to take F. H. to private medical centre by emergency car.  Furthermore, it was detected that the medical institute was not specialized in providing medical care for the given diagnosis. F. H. passed a Coronavirus test, the positive results of which were received only on June 23. After the receipt of the positive test results, F. H. was taken to Erebuni Medical Centre, where the relative medical treatment was organized.

Under the lack of proper medical conditions, F. H. was in a severely exhausted state, which led to his death.