Epress.am News from Armenia
Sevak Sargsyan, a 22-year-old resident of the village of Sardarapat in Armenia's Armavir province, has been suffering from renal insufficiency for two years and has had to travel frequently to the capital, Yerevan, for maintenance dialysis since his diagnosis in 2014.
“After the pre-draft medical assessment, my conscription was postponed for 3 years without any explanation. Two years later, I began suffering from blood pressure spikes and it turned out that I had kidney problems. Doctors said that we had to wait until kidney failure to start dialysis,” Sevak said in conversation with Epress.am.
The young man's brother, Ruslan, was also suffering from renal failure and last year he underwent kidney transplantation; his father, Oleg Sargsyan, was the donor. “My second son had already been undergoing dialysis for quite some time when my youngest was also diagnosed [with renal failure]. We managed to save Ruslan because an unnamed philanthropist donated the money for the transplantation surgery. But I have no idea how to help Sevak; there is no hope of finding a donor for him [in Armenia]. I'd give him my second kidney, but I'm not allowed to. Treatment abroad may be our only hope. He won't survive here, he'll have to continue dialysis until he dies.”
Oleg Sargsyan tried to take out a loan for his son's treatment in Europe, but he wasn't granted one because he had a few late payments on a previous loan he had taken out to pay for the dialysis. The desperate father has resorted to crowd funding to raise the money for the medical expenses.
“I'd sell everything I own to save my son but I have nothing except for some small plots of land. I did put them up for sale, but no one is interested in buying land today. My wife's salary is our only regular source of income. I'm engaged in agriculture, but hailstorms often spoil my whole crop, and I don't even make enough money to cover the loan payments,” Sargsyan said.
The Sargsyans' have no expectations from the state and haven't even tried to apply to any state structure for help. “We work for the state but it's doing everything to strip us of everything we've got. What should we do? Should we just leave [Armenia]?”
The Ministry of Agriculture, according to Oleg Sargsyan, is a bright example of the poor performance of government structures. “The ministry is no use at all. The minister should just retire; I don't even understand what his function is any more. Every year he goes to some well-cultivated orchards to make it look as if the farmers are doing great. What about the rest of us? We have never received any help from the ministry.”