The Armenia Fund Launches Khashtarak Health Clinic Restoration Project

Yerevan, January 30, 2008 - Khashtarak community's health clinic will undergo complete renovation as part of the Armenia Fund Rural Development Program. The subcontractor tender has already been announced and the construction works are expected to commence in the spring. The project will become a reality thanks to the efforts of the Armenia Fund Netherlands Affiliate who managed to rally the support of both the local Armenian community and the government of the Netherlands around the idea of improving the health care in Armenia's border villages.

Khashtarak community is one of the six villages included in the Armenia Fund Rural Development Program pilot cluster. The renovated clinic will serve the needs of all these communities, providing the community members of the border villages with a viable alternative to traveling the regional center of Ijevan to get access to health care. The lack of efficient health care is an almost universal issue in all of rural Armenia. The health care point in Khashtarak is certainly no exclusion. Only one room in the two story building is currently in use, with the medical personnel limited to a dedicated doctor who defies the cold in the unheated building and helps the community members with advice and an occasional shot of medicine bought by the patients themselves from Ijevan. In the present situation, there is little more she can do. The clinic has received medical equipment as part of a support program but currently cannot use it as the building's abysmal conditions cannot accommodate their adequate placement and maintenance.

Thus, when the need arises, (even in the case of first aid), each community member is all alone in the difficult task of finding a running vehicle and making the several kilometer journey to the hospital in Ijevan. The situation is the same and worse in the other five villages constituting the Khashtarak cluster. There, the on the spot health care is limited to nurses who receive patients in small rooms that offer little opportunity for organizing an effective health care process.

The implementation of this project will see a full scale reconstruction of the health clinic in Khashtarak. This will include the whole spectrum of associated activities including the installation of a heating system, renovation of the leaking roof and the floor. With the reconstruction completed, this clinic will become the base for normally functioning health care system for the cluster as a whole. This is something that makes the implementation of the project all the more important.

"The idea of the cluster of villages is based on our firm belief that the small border communities will have a better chance to overcome their present isolation, to survive and develop in the modern world if they work together", says the Armenia Fund Executive Director Vahe Aghabegians. "Projects like this will help people living in these villages see themselves as an integral part of the whole and will become the basis for building mutually beneficial and effective cooperation with their neighbors."