Arsen Torosyan: 2020 will be a truly unprecedented year for the Armenian health system in terms of budget financing.

ArmInfo. 2020 will be truly unprecedented for the health care system of Armenia in terms of budget funding. This was announced on June 20 at the National Assembly by the RA Minister of Health Arsen Torosyan.

According to him, the growth of budget allocations is provided for by the program of medium-term expenditures. The new government of the country from the previous government inherited a rather complicated legacy. And if in 2018 the development of the health sector the funds were cut, in 2019, already under the new government, they grew to 109 billion drams. It is expected that in 2020 the medical institutions of the republic will receive an additional 16 billion drams. In the current year, the minister continued, another growth of funding for the sphere is expected due to the additional tax revenues received, which will be another unprecedented phenomenon in post-Soviet Armenia. "I will not compare with the Soviet period, but in the history of modern Armenia the growth is more than obvious," the head of the Ministry of Health stated.

He also noted that since May of last year, when a new government came to power in the country, an inventory of budget funds was held, which revealed numerous facts of "dispersion" of state funds. In particular, as a result of inspections in the tuberculosis dispensary for children in Dilijan, it turned out that in this institution, in fact, the children were not treated, and just rested with their parents. Meanwhile, the annual budget of the clinic was 300 million drams. A similar picture was observed in the medical center.  Grigor Lusavorich with an annual budget of 5 billion drams. As a result of optimization, this amount was reduced to 4 billion drams, and all the saved money was sent to support regional medical centers and purchase additional volumes of medical supplies.

The minister said that in August last year, wages of 10 thousand workers in the sphere were raised by 15- 20%. The same trend continued in 2019. "Step by step, we eliminate all negative phenomena in the health care system by allocating budget funds in a proportional sequence," the head of the department stated.