OXFAM submits the Outpatient Public Health Care in Armenia budget  based project evaluation report 

ArmInfo. Armenian office of Oxfam presented the evaluation report in respect to the Project on Outpatient Public Health Care in Armenia As Margarita Hakobyan, the  Director of OXFAM Armenian resident office, shared during her speech  delivered at the event opening, the three year duration project on  evaluation of the  budget based project, which will end in December  o9f this year, is implemented by the OXFAM office and Center on   Economic development and Research within the financial support of  European Union. She also informed, that the budget dimensions  evaluation embraces three aspects: social security, agriculture and  health care. 

"We have already completed the monitoring and evaluation of two  budget based projects in the sector of social security, and by the  end of December we plan to finalize also two projects in the sectors  of agriculture. Today we present the evaluation report in respect to  one of two projects in the field of health care," Hakobyan stated.  She added, that in 2016, within the purpose of implementation of the  project on on Outpatient Public Health Care, AMD 11.2 bln funds were  allocated, which forms about 12.7% of all the health care sector  budget of the country, i.e. proceeding of AMD 3763 per person.   

Following Hakobyan's wording, the monitoring showed that an urgent    need occurred to reformate the state policy in the field of  outpatient treatment services. Following the expert, to improve the  efficiency of the project, it is necessary to expand the range of  nationals involved, to correct the destination of the project, as  well as to strengthen the quality of the physician doctors' skills,    services supplied and drugs provided. "During this monitoring we  obtained very interesting results. For instance, in the case of  illness only 20% of population apply to polyclinics - mainly the  middle class and low middle, which is 78.5%.  Poor and rich people do  not apply to polyclinics, which is caused by low awareness and lack  of trust to the services provided. In general, there are children  under 7 years old and retired people that apply for treatment to  polyclinics," Hakobyan told. The preference right to get low costed  and free of charge drugs is rendered just to 17% of people, forming  one single group. 

The expert   mentioned also, that 4% of house maids have never  applied for outpatient treatment, and 7,5% apply very seldom. At the  same time 6,5% of house maids stated that in the case of  illness  they apply directly to stationary clinics, the same they do in  respect to their children in 4,7 % of cases. The patients of 46-60  age range apply for the stationary   treatment most often, forming  23%. And older people, which are 23.4%, apply to polyclinics. Men    applying for stationary treatment are 43,7%, and to polyclinics -  just 39,3%. Disabled patients apply to polyclinics in 32,9% of cases  - this is 70,6 % of the total number of people, comprising this  group.   And the poor people's   polyclinics   attendance forms only  32 % In his turn, Sergey Khachatryan, the Deputy Health Minister of  Armenia, stated, that yet from 90-ies of the last century, when a  transition to the new economic reality took place, a number of  problems in this field occurred. According his wording, Armenia  essentially derives from other countries, including neighbor ones,  due to a developed infrastructure in this aspect. "Although, despite  the availability of developed infrastructure, we have a number of  problems in this field," Khachatryan said. At the same time he stated  the willingness to work on cancellation of  all  the gaps existing in  this sector. 

To note, OXFAM is an International Charity Foundation, which was  founded in Oxford (Great Britain) in 1942. The Oxfam embraces more  than 70 countries. In Armenia the project was launched in 1993,  supporting Armenian Government to implement the priorities of  national development.  The Economic and Development Research Center  (EDRC) is an independent research foundation, which was established  in 2001 in Yerevan, to implement independent research in the field of  social development.