Armenian media accuses Health Ministry of corruption

The organization of state contracts in Armenia's health sector is fraught with risks and interventions, the Yerevan-based newspaper Hraparak writes, citing unnamed informed sources.

"The State Health Agency of Armenia employs specialists who combine their activities with their work at the Wigmore Children's Hospital. And to a certain extent, they support their clinic in getting a state order. For example, during the holiday season, parents plan to have their teeth treated, and when they apply, the specialists at the Agency tell them that they will have to wait in line. And if the parent's application belongs to the Wigmore clinic, the state order is quickly approved,” the newspaper says, Caliber.Az reports.

“The Agency's passion for Wigmore has a reason. The mother of the Armenian Minister of Health Anahit Avanesyan was found to have business interests in the clinic.”

According to the source, Wigmore has rented the building of the hospital, which is located on Pushkin Street, in Yerevan from the mother of Minister Margarita Vardanyan.

The newspaper writes that they tried to find out from Agency Director Aaron Barseghian whether they have specialists who also work at Wigmore and whether there is no conflict of interest here, but Barseghian did not answer the phone.

"By the way, just two days ago, Tsaghik Vardanyan, founder of the “Right to Health” and former director of the Agency, who held high positions in the ministry for about 10 years, also spoke about this issue without naming names. She wrote on her page, "There is a 'miraculous' innovation: 'elite' staff who combine their work as practitioners with monitoring of patients by order of the government.

“Vardanyan also appealed to the Azerbaijani State Control Service, suggesting to investigate, for example, who deals with state orders for children's rehabilitation and narrow professional cases, as a result of which one may accidentally find out that this person works in the very institution whose cases he deals with as an employee of the Ministry of Health," the publication says.