Armenia: youth bring lasting change to health care

By: Nune Hayrapetyan; Communications; World Vision Armenia

Lena, aged 16, and her friends visited their regional authorities in Armenia to remind them about child rights, especially those related to health.

Following a training session through World Vision’s Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) programme, students learned about CVA’s advocacy approach to local development issues in Armenia. 

Students from 13 remote communities in Alaverdi who participated in the training session began monitoring how their local governments were doing in regards to keeping their promises to provide for child health.

The statistics the students gathered showed that almost 90 per cent of 150 families they surveyed didn’t know they had the right to a free health check-up. Relying primarily on home remedies for sickness often results in people living with latent diseases from childhood, only turning to doctors when faced with extreme health conditions.

Many parents were shocked to learn that they can turn to the health post once a year for a general health check-up for their children, free of charge. Other parents remained suspicious that the health checks were actually free of charge.

After two weeks of informing their local communities of their health rights, six students met with their Governor about the health-check issue.

“It was the first time in our lives that we could meet our authorities face-to-face or just be heard by them on an issue that concerned us. We gave the Governor the statistics we had from our small observation, and he promised us to work on that issue,” shares Lena, adding that the young group of activists plan to visit the Governor again in near future to keep him accountable.

“The Governor was surprised to hear that youth were standing up for the rights of their fellow community members. But, he was open to us and agreed to follow-up on the procedure of making the law work,” says Ashot Perikhanyan, World Vision Armenia Alaverdi Area Development Program (ADP) specialist.

Soon after the meeting with the Governor, health specialists began to appear in communities where previously, no health posts were available at all. The health posts still are inadequately supplied, but small steps are being taken to move forward.

“Lena and her friends are good examples for others of the importance of standing up and fighting for your rights. Keeping the government accountable and raising awareness within communities is the key to success better health,” said Varazdat Sargsyan, World Vision Armenia Advocacy Expert.

“We all should speak about these kind of issues to motivate others [to] act for their rights. I shared my experience at home, at school, in the community, even during the TEDxKids talks at Yerevan. [I want] to spread the word in the whole country, that people are mighty, they just need to speak out,” smiled Lena.