Children and doctors in Armavir
Following the September 2007 opening of the Child Development and Rehabilitation Center (CDRC) in the regional capital also named Armavir, 22 local doctors – mostly family doctors –had undergone special training by Yerevan specialists, aimed at increasing their skills and knowledge about the early diagnosis of children with disabilities.
The general aim of the trainings, and a key focal point in the Mission East project ‘A Health Start’, is to ensure that hundreds of children who until now would otherwise only be diagnosed later in life – often too late – can now be given a correct diagnosis as early as possible, and thus in many cases the chance of timely and adequate treatment and follow-up.
Kim Hartzner, Managing Director of Mission East and himself a medical doctor, has been based in Armenia since August of 2006, and spent a long day in Armavir on December 21st: First, he took part in the final training sessions of the Armavir doctors, carried out by prominent Yerevan neurologist, Dr. Artsruni Hakobyan. Then, he spent time with the specialist staff at the CDRC, seeing how three children were given follow-up care by the CDRC staff, consisting of a pediatrician, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a psychologist, a special educator and a physical therapist.
Afterwards, Kim Hartzner joined the 22 doctors and a range of partner NGO and local authority representatives, including the District Governor of Armavir, at a ceremony where special certificates were handed over to the 22 doctors. The certificates were given for their participation in the course “Developmental delays and child disability” – and now part of Continuous Medical Examination for pediatricians of Armenia.
Finally, the day was rounded up by a keynote presentation of the results of a survey carried out by Mission East and our partners, which described the fate of the hundreds of children in Armavir whom we and our medical partner ‘discovered’ and diagnosed with various kinds of disabilities. Many of these children had never been to see a doctor, and of those who had actually been to see a doctor, many had never received any follow-up care.
This situation of neglect and lack of attention is now undergoing a dramatic change, with the establishing of the Child Development and Rehabilitation Center and with the ongoing training of Armavir doctors.
The training course on Child Development, conducted for health care providers of the Armavir region (pediatricians, family doctors, pediatric psychiatrist, neurologist, ENT specialist) is a unique experience in the continuous medical education of doctors in Armenia. The overall purpose of the training “Developmental delays and child disability” was to acquaint the doctors from the primary level, the ones in charge of growth and development of children and first to diagnose developmental disorders, with a new and less known area of medicine in Armenia. The course was aimed at improving the knowledge and skills on early identification of the developmental disorders in children of early age and improving referrals for special assessment and multidisciplinary treatment. This is one of the most important steps in improving care for the disabled children of Armenia as surveys carried out in the region had highlighted problems such as late (sometimes enormously late) identification of such cases and malpractice in the area of referrals, realizing that only by early intervention is it possible to prevent developing irreversible disability in sick children.
The final training session of the Armavir doctors was carried out by prominent Yerevan neurologist, Dr. Artsruni Hakobyan (standing to the left).
